BACK IN THE mid-1960s, aquatic explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau wowed audiences worldwide with his television documentary series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Forty years later, oddball director Wes Anderson has made an eccentric tribute to the French explorer and his famous ship Calypso.
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou features Bill Murray as a whacked-out Cousteau clone in search of the big shark that ate his diving buddy. Although the humour won't be to everyone's taste - many of the jokes are so deadpan that they're not actually funny - it's still an unusual and offbeat film.
Anderson, who previously hit it big with The Royal Tenenbaums, says his film is more inspired by the legend of Cousteau than based on actual events in the explorer's life.
'Ultimately, it's not about him,' he says at the Berlin International Film Festival. 'Like all my films, it's actually about people that I know. But Cousteau is a hero of mine, and Aquatic is intended as a tribute to him. He was a great oceanographer, and he had all the qualities of a movie star, too. I think he'd be pleased with the film. He certainly liked to get attention, and he really liked to stir things up.'
In The Life Aquatic, Anderson brings together a typically free-ranging cast and puts them through both comic and dramatic turns. Murray plays Zissou, once television's biggest adventure star, but now on the point of becoming a has-been. When Zissou's best friend is eaten by a shark, he sets out to trap the beast. Revenge isn't his only motive - he also hopes to increase his ratings.
Zissou is helped and hindered by Willem Dafoe as a pandering ship's mate, Cate Blanchett as a prying British journalist, and Owen Wilson as his philandering long-lost son. No lesser stars are the pretty animated fish, courtesy of The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick.