The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2-Disc Criterion Collection) (DVD)

Wes Anderson has made quite an impression on film lovers off a limited number of films. Before Life Aquatic Anderson made waves with The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore, two films that I personally could not get into but others absolutely love. So, with The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou I was a bit worried about what I was going to get, primarily because I just don't get Anderson's style of comedy.

Anderson goes a bit off the deep-end with Life Aquatic, a film that Anderson fanatics won't find as enjoyable, since it is a bit more mainstream, but it also won't appeal to the masses entirely because it still has enough of that Anderson quirk that make his films so recognizable.

Life Aquatic teams an all-star cast including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor and Bud Cort all for this fantastical underwater aquarium style flick including stop-motion animation of Crayola colored sea horses and foam-rubber fishies.

Centering on internationally famous oceanographer Steve Zissou (Murray) and his crew, Team Zissou sets out to avenge the death of Zissou crew member, Esteban, who was eaten by an unknown giant shark tentatively called the Jaguar Shark. Team leader, Steve Zissou, is so upset that he has vowed to find the killer and blow it up with dynamite, which goes against everything he stands for as an oceanographic documentarian.

Before Team Zissou ever sets out on their voyage they gain a couple of new crew members, one of them being a young airline co-pilot who may or may not be Zissou's son (Wilson), a beautiful and very pregnant journalist (Blanchett) assigned to write a profile of Zissou and Zissou's estranged wife and co-producer, Eleanor (Huston).

These new passengers along with bouts with pirates, kidnappers and a bit of thievery makes Team Zissou's voyage what would best be described as interesting, just as is this 2-Disc collection.

On top of the feature, disc one contains an audio commentary with Anderson and his co-writer Noah Baumbach and a "Starz on the Set" behind-the-scenes feature. As for the Starz feature, skip it, there is much better stuff on disc-two, and as for the commentary, well that is a mixed bag of goods.

Anderson and Baumbach team together for their commentary in the restaurant they actually wrote the film in, complete with all the annoying ambiance of a restaurant, which at times can be annoying, and speaking of annoying there are several words that are censored out from the commentary, namely the inspiration for several key portions of the flick, why even put it in the commentary? While this commentary does offer some good stuff, the little things do begin to get on the nerves.

Moving along, the second disc is filled with goods including a video interview with film composer and Devo member Mark Mothersbaugh, intern/actor Matthew Gray Gubler's video journal of the production, cast member Seu Jorge performs ten complete David Bowie songs in Portuguese, several interviews with cast members based on their character, all of which contain behind-the-scenes footage, ten deleted scenes, a look at how they made the stop-motion animated sea life, a very boring and poorly produced 16-minute look at the "Mondo Monda" Italian TV show in which Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach are interviewed, and a TON of pictures of the production, some of which are breathtaking and others that are absolutely hilarious.

Whew, that is one long sentence filled with lots of features, and while most of those are great the best of the second disc comes in the form of "This is an Adventure," an unguided documentary of the entire production that sits back and allows you to play the part of the third wheel for just over 51 minutes.

Overall, I am torn between liking and disliking this film after watching the DVD and all it has to offer. I was leaning toward giving it a bad rating after I saw it in the theater but now after seeing it again along with the special features I feel somewhat more attached to the production. Not only that, this film has Willem Dafoe's greatest performance ever as Klaus, along with another classic performance by Bill Murray, and while the story still gets stagnant at times the end result is moderately enjoyable.

As far as recommending this movie, I would say that Wes Anderson fans should certainly pick it up, as should fans of last year's I Heart Huckabees. Mainstream moviegoers looking for the blockbuster bangs should skip this production altogether, you won't enjoy it. If you are debating on the one or two-disc versions of the DVD, definitely go for the two-disc as the special features are well worth the extra dollars.