All washed up
is the Life Aquatic. Where do I start? The basic premise of the movie, Scientist loses best life-long friend to never before seen and endangered sea creature and vows revenge, is pretty funny. The plot is somewhat slow going, especially for someone addicted to car chases and body parts blown to bits. The movie probably would do better as a play – I think it was actually based on a play. There are some funny scenes, but not nearly as many as I would expect from a Bill Murray film.
It did contain a fair amount of death, destruction, piracy on the high seas (not to be confused with making illegal copies of the DVD), a three legged dog and a wealthy nemesis who dogs Zizou (Murray) throughout the film. Of course, since it’s filmed in a documentary type format the drama surrounding death is minimalized and the gun fight scenes are characaturized. Too much of the film will be missed if you only watch it once – this one requires at least two sittings – as much of the really interesting plots run just under the surface and are referenced so quietly or as an aside that the real meat of the movie is missed.
If you do manage to watch it through once, pop it back in to catch all the subtleties that you surely missed the first time crunching the popcorn too loudly in your mouth.
