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IMDbPro

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

  • 20042004
  • RR
  • 1h 59m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
195K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
3,063
2
Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, Bud Cort, Anjelica Huston, Michael Gambon, and Owen Wilson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
CT #1 Post
Play trailer2:32
2 Videos
99+ Photos
  • Action
  • Adventure
  • Comedy
With a plan to exact revenge on a mythical shark that killed his partner, Oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) rallies a crew that includes his estranged wife, a journalist, and a man wh... Read allWith a plan to exact revenge on a mythical shark that killed his partner, Oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) rallies a crew that includes his estranged wife, a journalist, and a man who may or may not be his son.With a plan to exact revenge on a mythical shark that killed his partner, Oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) rallies a crew that includes his estranged wife, a journalist, and a man who may or may not be his son.
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
195K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
3,063
2
  • Director
    • Wes Anderson
  • Writers
    • Wes Anderson
    • Noah Baumbach
  • Stars
    • Bill Murray
    • Owen Wilson
    • Anjelica Huston
Top credits
  • Director
    • Wes Anderson
  • Writers
    • Wes Anderson
    • Noah Baumbach
  • Stars
    • Bill Murray
    • Owen Wilson
    • Anjelica Huston
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 711User reviews
    • 267Critic reviews
    • 62Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 3 wins & 10 nominations

    Videos2

    The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    Trailer 2:32
    The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    A Guide to the Films of Wes Anderson
    Clip 1:54
    A Guide to the Films of Wes Anderson

    Photos132

    Jeff Goldblum and Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Owen Wilson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Willem Dafoe in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Bill Murray and Willem Dafoe in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Robyn Cohen and Noah Taylor in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Robyn Cohen and Noah Taylor in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Noah Baumbach and Michael Gambon in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Bill Murray and Owen Wilson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Anjelica Huston in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Noah Taylor and Seu Jorge in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
    Bud Cort and Michael Gambon in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Bill Murray
    Bill Murray
    • Steve Zissou
    Owen Wilson
    Owen Wilson
    • Ned Plimpton
    Anjelica Huston
    Anjelica Huston
    • Eleanor Zissou
    Cate Blanchett
    Cate Blanchett
    • Jane Winslett-Richardson
    Willem Dafoe
    Willem Dafoe
    • Klaus Daimler
    Jeff Goldblum
    Jeff Goldblum
    • Alistair Hennessey
    Michael Gambon
    Michael Gambon
    • Oseary Drakoulias
    Noah Taylor
    Noah Taylor
    • Vladimir Wolodarsky
    Bud Cort
    Bud Cort
    • Bill Ubell
    Seu Jorge
    Seu Jorge
    • Pelé dos Santos
    Robyn Cohen
    Robyn Cohen
    • Anne-Marie Sakowitz
    Waris Ahluwalia
    Waris Ahluwalia
    • Vikram Ray
    Niels Koizumi
    • Bobby Ogata
    Pawel Wdowczak
    • Renzo Pietro
    Matthew Gray Gubler
    Matthew Gray Gubler
    • Intern #1
    Seymour Cassel
    Seymour Cassel
    • Esteban du Plantier
    Antonio Monda
    • Festival Director
    Isabella Blow
    • Antonia Cook
    • Director
      • Wes Anderson
    • Writers
      • Wes Anderson
      • Noah Baumbach
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

    Explore the Style of Director Wes Anderson

    Explore the Style of Director Wes Anderson

    IMDb takes a closer look at the trademarks of Wes Anderson's directorial style, including tracking shots, hand-placed objects, distinct color palettes, and more.
    Watch the video
    Image caption not available
    1:54

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Cate Blanchett never rehearsed with the crew and hadn't even met most of them before filming the nighttime electric jellyfish scene in which she first appears in the movie to add spontaneity to the scene.
    • Goofs
      Jane says she's reading a "six volume novel" to her unborn child, but is holding one volume in her hands while six others are lying on the chair, which makes it a seven volume novel.
    • Quotes

      Steve Zissou: Don't point that gun at him, he's an unpaid intern.

    • Crazy credits
      During the end credits the filmmakers acknowledge that the real Steve Zissou is a prominent attorney in New York City specializing in complex federal litigation.
    • Connections
      Featured in Late Night with Conan O'Brien: Bill Murray/Tony Bennett (2004)
    • Soundtracks
      Main Title
      from Innerspace

      Written and Performed by Sven Libaek

      Courtesy of Ron Taylor Film Productions

    User reviews711

    Review
    Top review
    Swimming Beneath and Yet Breathing
    I'm not generally a fan of Wes Anderson. He relies too heavily on the charm of detachment. Burton has this problem too, hidden under the humorous tone. The appeal is a generational thing and I guess I'm too old to simply find that enough.

    But here, he does something different than what I have seen elsewhere from him. I think it is because the Owen influence is small here. The form is a movie about making a life which is a movie. Both the movie and the movie within have fantastic elements, but we do have a clear shift to brighter colors and crisper landscapes when within the inner world.

    Its all based on synthetic notions of drama: love, purpose, worth. When you sneak up on things this way, you have to play a delicate game, one I think Wes usually flubs. You have to engage by setting a distance that is far enough from the norm that we as viewers can lean into it, and near enough to what we think of as real flesh that we want to.

    Bill Murray doesn't understand this balance, because he's all about distance. Never mind, he's just an actor. So you select actors that try for the closeness. Dafoe and Blanchett get this. What they choose to do is simple: they form a real person and layer some cartoonish mannerisms on top. We see through the play and value the real underneath, where we cannot with Murray and Wilson.

    Because the whole thing can blend together, we get a wonderful balance of this tension: engagement and studied apartness. I credit Anderson with maintaining this container. It works. And it works because he was smart. You can see that he understands this dynamic well enough to know that we will be impatient with his tricks for very long. So the movie changes tone as it moves along. It changes slowly with less emphasis on the personal abstraction and more on abstracting the physical: the ship, the rooms, beds, sub. It allows Cate to present her womb, which is quite a miracle.

    If you read the trivia at IMDb, you find that many top actresses wanted this part. So it is pretty amazing that Cate's condition as a pregnant woman who knows how to turn herself inside out was able to have that condition become so central to the world we see.

    This isn't quirky. This isn't comedy. This is extremely sensitive positioning of the audience to allow for deeper penetration. Its a triangulation of "Incident at Loch Ness" and "Cowards Bend the Knee ."

    I felt blessed watching it.

    Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
    helpful•17
    10
    • tedg
    • Jun 2, 2008

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • December 25, 2004 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Languages
      • English
      • Icelandic
      • Filipino
      • Portuguese
      • French
      • Tagalog
      • German
      • Italian
    • Also known as
      • The Life Aquatic
    • Filming locations
      • Naples, Campania, Italy
    • Production companies
      • Touchstone Pictures
      • American Empirical Pictures
      • Scott Rudin Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $50,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $24,020,403
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $113,085
      • Dec 12, 2004
    • Gross worldwide
      • $34,809,623
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 59 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • DTS
      • Dolby Digital
      • SDDS
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

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    Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, Bud Cort, Anjelica Huston, Michael Gambon, and Owen Wilson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
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