I wasn’t much entertained by The Life Aquatic or by The Royal Tennenbaums. I turned off Tennenbaums about 25 minutes in. I made it through The Life Aquatic, but it was rather tedious for long stretches.
I saw it in the theatres with my sister and her friend, and I promptly fell asleep during it. I was completely bored and uninterested. But that’s a trend for me and the director’s movies. But I’m also the guy who holds great love for “Puss in Boots” featuring a younger Christopher Walken.
I’m a big Wes Anderson fan, and the first time I saw it, I thought it was the weakest of his movies. But, being something of a completist, I bought the DVD when it came out. The second time I watched it I liked it a lot more. Then, for some reason, I watched it a third time and really, really liked it. It seems like the same phenomenon that happens with some albums for me: the ones I end up liking the best and for the longest are the ones I couldn’t get into the first time.
The movie’s big weak spot is the pirate attack. It’s really out of character with the rest of the movie, and seems generally poorly executed. And I’m saying that as a huge Iggy and the Stooges fan. Anderson just doesn’t know how to do an action sequence, I guess.
I love Bill Murray and Anjelica Huston and was looking forward to seeing the movie. A friend of mine and her husband got it, watched it and sent it to me. “How nice” I thought. So I watched it, was tempted to turn it off by about half way through, but stuck it out.
I emailed my friend and told her I didn’t really like it. In fact, I kinda hated it a little. Was there something I was just missing? Not getting?
She wrote me back and said “good! We hated it too and thought maybe we were missing something. That’s why we sent it to you.”
It was like the basic framework of a good movie, but they didn’t bother fleshing it out into a good movie. I was like, “this is a joke, right? When do we see the real movie? Are you trying to make fun of something? What? Me, for watching it?”
Of the three recent movies I’ve seen in which Bill Murray plays the same damn morose, midlife-crisis-stricken mope, this is the one that seemed to spend the least amount of screen time on lingering, silent shots of Murray sitting motionless while all around him…nothing happens. Consequently, I found it the most enjoyable of the three. And the little animated critters were fun.