The films of Wes Anderson are so personal, authentic and his own, that he is a true auteur and one of the American filmmakers that I admire the most since his first feature film. However, from time to time the connection breaks and I skip some of his movies. This comedy is my least favorite of his filmography, an expensive, overlong, and superflous portrait of a megalomaniac oceanographer who resembles anything but a scientist, saved by the filmmaker's compassion and gentle way to paint characters for whom he seems to have true affection. A sort of adventure melodrama, in which the sudden appearance in the ocenographer's life of a son he had never met is central to the story. It is not bad, but I have seen much better Andersons.
Review of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
