Emo director tackles Melville-esque yarn

Wes Anderson is arguably the best and most eccentric filmmaker of his generation. His movies reflect the man himself in that they're weird as all get out. Such is the case with his latest, "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" -- his strangest, saddest and arguably most precious effort to date.\nBill Murray headlines the picture in masterful form as a pot-smoking Jacques Cousteau knockoff by the name of Steve Zissou. The oceanographer/documentarian has fallen upon hard times. His marriage to Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), the quote unquote brains of his operation, is imploding. His best friend, Esteban (Seymour Cassel), has been eaten by a "jaguar" shark nobody believes exists. Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett), a preganant reporter who idolized Zissou as a child, is in the midst of writing a smear piece on him. Zissou has also discovered that he may or may not be the father of a 29-year-old Kentuckian airplane pilot named Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson, refreshingly playing against type), this in spite of the fact that Zissou, "Doesn't like fathers. And never wanted to be one." To add insult to injury, Zissou's latest documentaries have been widely panned and all his grant money is being usurped by his wife's half-gay ex-husband Alistair Hennessey (a smarmy Jeff Goldblum).\nAnderson's love of oceanography has been hinted at in previous works such as "Rushmore," but this is an unabashedly bizarre love letter to the science. This isn't the only difference fans of Anderson's work will notice here. The film is marked by a much deeper degree of sadness, what with two of its protagonists perishing before the closing credits. In stark contrast to these issues of mortality, Anderson amps up the sense of whimsy that's been a staple of all his movies. By employing the stop-motion animation of Henry Selick (best known for "The Nightmare Before Christmas"), Anderson's take on the sea and its inhabitants is simultaneously surrealistic and storybook-esque. The biggest departure for the filmmaker has to be the way in which he's embraced violence and gunplay. The action sequences play out like something produced by the Max Fischer Players with a sharper sadistic edge. Though, it's pretty sweet to see Murray engaging in a gunfight while wearing a Speedo and a bathrobe. These differences might be attributable to Noah Baumbach stepping in for Wilson on co-screenwriting duties.\n"The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" may not be Anderson's best film (that'd be "The Royal Tenenbaums") but it's still a whole helluva lot better than much of what's out there. Plus, it's got a Brazillian dude singing David Bowie songs in Portugese, Willem Dafoe playing a creepy German, a three-legged dog and Murray lighting a joint off a hot-air balloon engine's flame. What else do you need?