The one good reason to see Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is Bill Murray's tour de force central performance.
With Lost in Translation, Anderson's own Rushmore and now Life Aquatic, Murray has become the symbol of middle-age male angst.
His Steve Zissou is adrift in a sea of self-loathing, and it's all there in those big, sad puppy-dog eyes.
He's an oceanographer whose personal oceans are all but dried up.
His wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston) is not just unfaithful but is cheating on him with Zissou's arch rival, the bisexual Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum). That really hurts because Zissou is so homophobic.
Zissou's career is equally washed up.
He hasn't had a successful documentary in years so he's using a personal tragedy to try to get it back on course.
On their last expedition, Zissou's best friend and longtime collaborator was eaten by a "jaguar shark."
Zissou is not just going to hunt down the demon and kill it but record the journey on camera.
You'd be right to think Herman Melville's Moby Dick, but you don't have to look anywhere near that far away to see what needs to be done with material like this.
Earlier this year in their mocumentary Incident at Loch Ness -- a far more ironically humorous movie -- Zak Penn and Werner Herzog used old Nessy as a killer beast stalking a documentary film crew.
From his debut with Bottle Rocket, Anderson's films have all been about fathers and sons and the responsibilities, disappointments and pain that relationship can bring.
Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson) washes up at Zissou's door claiming to be his son from a fling almost three decades earlier.
It allows Anderson to riff once again on filial abandonment, but that's all Anderson does this time -- he riffs and riffs without being particularly insightful or hilarious.
Wilson's mock Southern accent and silliness are as annoying as the pirate attack that turns Zissou and his crew into seafaring Rambos.
The best balance to Murray's dry, wry delivery is Willem Dafoe's petulance.
Dafoe's Klaus Dailmer has always considered himself to be the son Zissou never had, so when Ned turns up, it's instant rivalry and genuinely hilarious to see Dafoe acting like a child.
There is a charming 90-minute comedy somewhere in Life Aquatic, but the extra 30 or so minutes in this version point out just how self-indulgent Anderson is becoming.
(This film is rated 14-A.)
NOTE: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou opens Dec. 25 in theatres.
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