BY LOIS WADSWORTH
PHILLIPPE ANTONELLO. BUENA VISTA PUBLICITY, 2004
A group of high-seas adventurers led by The Belafonte’s captain (center), Steve Zissou (Bill Murray),
and his wife, Eleanor (Anjelica Huston).
Into the Unknown
With fake fish and pirates
Written and directed by Wes Anderson. Co-written by
Noah Baumbach. Produced by Wes Anderson, Barry
Mendel, Scott Rudin. Executive producer, Rudd
Simmons. Cinematographer, Robert Yeoman. Editor,
David Moritz. Production design, Mark Friedberg.
Costume design, Milena Canonera. Music, Mark
Mothersbaugh. Music supervisor, Randall Poster.
Animation, Henry Selick. Starring Bill Murray. With
Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem
Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor,
Bud Cort, Pelé dos Santos and Seymour Cassel.
Touchstone Pictures, 2004. R. 118 minutes.
A
weird title and stars such as Bill
Murray, Owen Wilson and a fabu-
lous Cate Blanchett may bring folks
to the theater, but this hodge-podge of a
movie probably won’t make even aficiona-
dos happy. Why the film doesn’t work is
complicated, but the marine setting doesn’t
help.
It’s as if director Wes Anderson imagined
the movie as some kind of ocean creature.
Should it be a Crayon Pony Fish, an out-
landish but colorful fake designed by anima-
tor Henry Selick? How about the movie as an
electric jellyfish with glowing globular pat-
terns? Or should the movie be pure hokum,
like the 80-foot Jaguar Shark? As metaphor,
Selick’s ocean creatures made me feel I was
watching the fake fish in a doctor’s waiting-
room aquarium. Anderson’s film is as bla-
tantly phony as the light-colored, critter killer
shark with black spots and a mean disposi-
tion, which ate Steve Zissou’s (Murray) for-
mer partner and set the whole plot in motion.
More baloney than fish, this hybrid Life
Aquatic is at once a satirical send-up of a
marginal television underwater adventure
show and a melodrama about the host’s own
dark-edged, mid-life crisis. I can’t recall a
single sequence in which the antagonistic
thematic elements actually come together. By
the time the hero springs into action and takes
on the modern-day pirates, I’d lost interest in
the episodic plot.
The film is strangely edited — choppy,
disjointed. Curiously, the camera pauses a
long time on irrelevant scenes such as a char-
acter talking on the telephone, which neither
creates conflict nor moves the story along.
This holding-the-take flaw prompts me to
suggest the crew and actors probably should
not actually work if they are drunk or stoned.
Murray may only pretend to be stoned, but it
seemed all of them resided in an altered uni-
verse not accessible to the audience.
According to the press notes, Anderson
thought he was making an adventure genre
film. He said he’d been thinking about this
film for 14 years. Hmm. Then he and his writ-
ing pal, Noah Baumbach, met at a New York
restaurant, Bar Pitti, every day and fleshed
out the screenplay. Oh.
I wasn’t a fan of Anderson’s first film,
Bottle Rocket, 1996. Besides being too
I LOOK FORWARD TO
ANDERSON’S
NEXT MOVIE.
THIS ONE IS A
DUD.
Murray gives his usual deadpan perform-
ance here, but I looked in vain for the under-
stated heart of Steve Zissou. Such a self-ab-
sorbed character is hard to like. Ned Plimpton
(Wilson), is Steve’s son, who wanted a look
at his dad but stays to become part of Team
Zissou. In one of Wilson’s first non-comic
roles, he is paired him with Cate Blanchett as
Jane, a smart, pregnant journalist bent on in-
terviewing Zissou and returning to sanity.
Jane and Ned are the only warm-blooded,
non-cartoon characters onboard the
Belafonte.
Other characters include Klaus Daimler
(Willem Dafoe), an engineer, who needs at-
tention and praise from Zissou. Eleanor
(Anjelica Huston) is Zissou’s wife, who has
brains, money and the opportunity to get
away from the Belafonte, which she exer-
cises early in the film. Bill Ubell (Bud Cort)
is the solid, bond-company stooge kid-
napped by pirates. Cort puts heart into this
small role. Rival oceanographer Alistair
Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum) is Zissou’s
nemesis.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is now
playing at Cinemark and Cinema World. I
look forward to Anderson’s next movie. This
one is a dud.
ew
BY LOIS WADSWORTH
Deadpan Walking*
Private Idaho
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE: Written and directed by Jared Hess. Co-
written by Jerusha Hess. Produced by Jermy Coon, Chris Wyatt, Sean C. Covel.
Executive producer, Jory Weitz. Cinematography, Munn Powell. Production
design, Cory Lorenzen. Editor, Jeremy Coon. Music, John Swihart. Starring Jon
Heder, with Jon Gries, Aaron Ruell, Efren Ramirex, Tina Majoino and Diedrich
Bader. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2004. PG. 86 minutes.
A
sleeper, Napoleon Dynamite has been on local movie
screens since July 23. Allowed to find its legs and grow
a word-to-mouth audience, the little film that could, did.
It finished the year with a worldwide, cumulative box office take
of nearly $45 million and was released on DVD December 21. I
finally caught the film in its final round of theatrical release at
Movies 12. I wanted to understand why all the cool twenty- and
thirty-year olds in my extended family were urging me to see it.
Created by 26-year-old, writer and director Jared Hess and his
23-year-old co-writer and wife, Jerusha, both former film students
at Brigham Young University, Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is
everybody’s secret high-school nerd identity. No matter how
smart, rich, hip or talented we become, the inner Napoleon
reminds us of a time when we didn’t know how much we didn’t
know and thought we knew everything.
Never a smart-ass, Napoleon possesses a profoundly unself-
conscious confidence that fuels his every interaction, even those
in which he is being physically bashed about. He casually tosses
out wholly outrageous white lies when the conversation calls for
it, such as touting his deadly Ninja numchuk skills and his
immodest expertise in wolverine hunting.
Napoleon lives in a small town in Idaho, similar to Preston,
Idaho, where film director Hess grew up. Napoleon and his 31
year-old brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), who is a strange duck, live
with their grandmother. After she is injured in a motorcycle acci-
dent, Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), comes to take care of the boys.
Now Napoleon’s worst fears are realized: He’s not only bullied
at school but also at home. Rico is a guy who has never found
himself, a lost soul whose life effectively stopped when he got out
of high school. He lives out of his van, selling plastic storage con-
tainers and breast enhancers. He believes in time-travel and other
woo-woo (read: crank) ideas.
Napoleon makes friends with a new boy in school, Pedro
(Efren Ramirez), and admires Deb (Tina Majorino), who seems to
like him back, so the three of them pal around together. Pedro
hardly has a word to say, but girls like him. Deb is dying for high
school to be over so she can get out of town. Meantime, she ped-
dles hand-crafted, boondoggle key rings she made and practices
photography by taking glamor shots of Rico. Deb is totally lov-
able.
Like all teen movies I’ve seen, I’m suspicious of Napoleon
Dynamite‘s improbable, happy ending. While his actions are con-
gruent with his character, Napoleon might not bring down the
house with the dance form he’s practiced in front of the mirror at
home. But he would stand up for his friend, Pedro. And that’s the
kind of action that counts, even for a high school geek.
For at least one more week, Napoleon Dynamite is playing at
Movies 12. Be there or be square.
*P.S. I stole the great headline from Michael Atkinson’s
review of the film in the Village Voice.
ew
Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder),
ready for the senior prom.
AARON RUELL. FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES, 2004.
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU:
freakin’ adolescent for my taste, the film was
mean-spirited. By Rushmore, Anderson had
found his way to tell offbeat, ironic stories
about curious characters while entertaining
the audience. The Royal Tennenbaums was
even better. The characters were weird, but
their psychodrama stayed within the family.
The Tennenbaums were spectacularly more
idiosyncratic than your average mom, dad,
bub and sis unit, but Anderson’s movie was
about how they worked — or didn’t work —
as a familial group. I loved it. Anderson prob-
ably intended the underwater explorers and
crew of Zissou’s ship to seem like a family,
but the effort fails.
JANUARY 6, 2005 21