The Life Aquatic
I am rather distraught to find I am one of the few people who truly hated this movie. And I know what you're thinking; "oh he went in with a bad attitude because the negative reviews swayed him," but au contraire you dick, I entered the theater with a clear mind and a free ticket. And when you leave a movie super pissed off AND it was completely free, then there must be a grave problem. I mean, think about that, I didn't pay shit to see this movie and for the rest of the night I was angry that I had to sit through it. So anyway, enough ranting, here is my list of reasons why this is arguably the worst movie (and one of the biggest disappointments) of 2004.
-The complex and interesting Wes Anderson characters of the past seem to have been lost in a sea (pardon the pun) of lifeless 2-d characters. Eg: dumb guy from Kentucky, old sea explorer, angry journalist, dumb german guy, rich explorer rival guy, etc. Say what you want, but could you reduce Royal to "old apathetic yet regretful dad" or Max Fisher to "Smart conflicted kid"? Not a chance, those characters were deep, unlike the heaping pile of lifeless cardboard that populates Life Aquatic. I guess these characters grow and evolve but you really get no sense of that cause the movie spends most of its time bounding from scene to scene without any story to back it up.
-Some of the performances in this film are the worst ever delivered by these actors with the exception of maybe Jeff Golblum. Bill Murray sounds bored, like hes sleeping through the entire movie. At certain emotional highpoints he sounds like he's reading from cue cards. His performace can be best described as lazy. Owen Wilson plays one of the most annoying roles I've ver seen, his accent fades in and out and his character is just plain boring. His character is a good example of how its hard to give a good goddamm about what happens to any of the people in this movie. Cate Blanchett is given some of the lamest dialog ever and so she ends up looking confused and kind of stupid. Willem Dafoe is wasted as the Disneylike comic relief dumbass crybaby german caricature.
-You can't completely blame the actors though, the screenplay they have to work with is downright bad. In fact if you pay attention to alot of the actor's inflections while delivering lines you can almost tell what they're thinking; "I don't get it. Is this supposed to be funny? Why is my character even saying this? I thought this guy's movies were supposed to be witty, but this just sounds stupid. Oh well, CHA CHING!" And what was with all the swearing? Swearing is good when its delivered properly but in this movie it was just tossed around like nothing. Remember how amazing it was when Max Fisher swore in Rushmore? "That mick just made my list of things to do today... I'm gonna bust a cap in his ass" or something to that effect, sorry if I quoted it wrong. Anyway, it was certainly better than "Cause I'm trying to stop swearing when I have my fucking baby". Ehhhhhhhh. I knew that I hated this movie during the scene when Blanchett shows up on the beach with all the jellyfish. The scene, the dialogue, and the acting were painful to sit through, and from that point on it got worse.
-The action scenes were set up and directed in such a way that completely robbed them of almost all suspense. Granted, it's always a rush when one of your favorite songs comes on in a movie (like in Bringing Out The Dead when Janie Jones comes on), but in this movie I didn't even really feel the rush because I found the scene unbelievable and poorly constructed. I was actually waiting for Murray to snap out of it and have it be some lame dream sequence, but to my horror it was an even lamer reality meant to give the film even more to do (swell).
- This movie was so long. About halfway through I started to think about how it would have made a pretty good short film, but unfortunately the bastard stretched on for an oppressive two hours. Think of it, 45 minutes at the longest, oceanographer's friend eaten by shark, he decides to hunt down said shark for revenge, END. No flacid romantic subplot, no long lost son boredom. Hell, you could even keep the pirates.
So, what? Does this mean Owen Wilson is the key to a good Wes Anderson movie? After all, this is the first one he had nothing to do with writing wise. Maybe this whole idea and subject was too big for Anderson to handle. It's a movie with a lot going on, and that might be the problem.
There were a few moments where I smiled and some of the shots were nice, but seriously it was far worse than any of the negative reviews had prepared me for. It wasn't all terrible though, the soundtrack was pretty cool, and the stopmotion/computer animation was...interesting. But all in all, if you haven't seen it yet, I wouldn't bother.
thoughts?
-The complex and interesting Wes Anderson characters of the past seem to have been lost in a sea (pardon the pun) of lifeless 2-d characters. Eg: dumb guy from Kentucky, old sea explorer, angry journalist, dumb german guy, rich explorer rival guy, etc. Say what you want, but could you reduce Royal to "old apathetic yet regretful dad" or Max Fisher to "Smart conflicted kid"? Not a chance, those characters were deep, unlike the heaping pile of lifeless cardboard that populates Life Aquatic. I guess these characters grow and evolve but you really get no sense of that cause the movie spends most of its time bounding from scene to scene without any story to back it up.
-Some of the performances in this film are the worst ever delivered by these actors with the exception of maybe Jeff Golblum. Bill Murray sounds bored, like hes sleeping through the entire movie. At certain emotional highpoints he sounds like he's reading from cue cards. His performace can be best described as lazy. Owen Wilson plays one of the most annoying roles I've ver seen, his accent fades in and out and his character is just plain boring. His character is a good example of how its hard to give a good goddamm about what happens to any of the people in this movie. Cate Blanchett is given some of the lamest dialog ever and so she ends up looking confused and kind of stupid. Willem Dafoe is wasted as the Disneylike comic relief dumbass crybaby german caricature.
-You can't completely blame the actors though, the screenplay they have to work with is downright bad. In fact if you pay attention to alot of the actor's inflections while delivering lines you can almost tell what they're thinking; "I don't get it. Is this supposed to be funny? Why is my character even saying this? I thought this guy's movies were supposed to be witty, but this just sounds stupid. Oh well, CHA CHING!" And what was with all the swearing? Swearing is good when its delivered properly but in this movie it was just tossed around like nothing. Remember how amazing it was when Max Fisher swore in Rushmore? "That mick just made my list of things to do today... I'm gonna bust a cap in his ass" or something to that effect, sorry if I quoted it wrong. Anyway, it was certainly better than "Cause I'm trying to stop swearing when I have my fucking baby". Ehhhhhhhh. I knew that I hated this movie during the scene when Blanchett shows up on the beach with all the jellyfish. The scene, the dialogue, and the acting were painful to sit through, and from that point on it got worse.
-The action scenes were set up and directed in such a way that completely robbed them of almost all suspense. Granted, it's always a rush when one of your favorite songs comes on in a movie (like in Bringing Out The Dead when Janie Jones comes on), but in this movie I didn't even really feel the rush because I found the scene unbelievable and poorly constructed. I was actually waiting for Murray to snap out of it and have it be some lame dream sequence, but to my horror it was an even lamer reality meant to give the film even more to do (swell).
- This movie was so long. About halfway through I started to think about how it would have made a pretty good short film, but unfortunately the bastard stretched on for an oppressive two hours. Think of it, 45 minutes at the longest, oceanographer's friend eaten by shark, he decides to hunt down said shark for revenge, END. No flacid romantic subplot, no long lost son boredom. Hell, you could even keep the pirates.
So, what? Does this mean Owen Wilson is the key to a good Wes Anderson movie? After all, this is the first one he had nothing to do with writing wise. Maybe this whole idea and subject was too big for Anderson to handle. It's a movie with a lot going on, and that might be the problem.
There were a few moments where I smiled and some of the shots were nice, but seriously it was far worse than any of the negative reviews had prepared me for. It wasn't all terrible though, the soundtrack was pretty cool, and the stopmotion/computer animation was...interesting. But all in all, if you haven't seen it yet, I wouldn't bother.
thoughts?