King for a lifetime, fool for a... lifetime...

I just blurbed about this on Begum, but hey, why not throw it on here as well?

Saw Life Aquatic last night with Asa and it was oddly disappointing. I know! I don't get it either. It has all the sensibilities of a Wes Anderson film -- the look, the humor, the sense of desperation bubbling just below the surface of it's offbeat characters -- but somehow I felt empty when the end credits rolled. Can't put my finger on why, exactly. The pacing felt pretty slow even though, in retrospect, it was probably paced at the same pace Royal Tenenbaums moves along. But Tenenbaums pops. It clicks right along. Not really the case here with Aquatic. Asa mentioned it last night, but the reason could be that Owen Wilson did not co-write this effort with Anderson as he did in the previous three. The characters don't feel engaging at all, either. There's interesting stuff happening on screen, but I'm just vaguely bored watching it, even if the occasional one-liner grabs me.

Still worth seeing, but you'd be wise to drop those expectations just a little.