D

The cognoscenti will undoubtedly find some perverse basis on which to praise Wes Anderson’s disastrous new try at a bittersweet comedy-drama, but the sad fact of the matter is that “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” is “funny” only in the sense of “strange,” and its attempts to touch deeper undercurrents quickly sink. This bit of waterlogged whimsy is the cinematic equivalent of a belly-flop.

The script, written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach, is a farrago of the director’s usual preoccupations–contorted familial relationships and the oddities of friendship and romance–set against the backdrop of a satire on documentary filmmaking, with a half-hearted spoof of “Moby Dick” thrown in for good measure. Steve Zissou, played in a state of perpetual smart-alecky funk by Bill Murray, is the leader of a low-rent team of Jacques Costeau wannabes–which includes Klaus (Willem Dafoe), an overly protective German first mate, a bespectacled equipment specialist (Noah Taylor) and a fellow (Seu Jorge) whose sole occupation seems to be singing David Bowie songs in Portuguese. Their latest expedition, captured in the most recent of a string of documentaries (poorly received at the Italian film festival that opens the picture), ended in one of their crew (Seymour Cassel, who after a single flashback has the good sense to appear only in photos and oil paintings) was eaten by what Zissou terms a “jaguar shark.” The bumbling oceanographer announces a plan to make his next film about his pursuit and destruction of the offending beast, but his dismal track record leads his legally challenged producer Oseary Drakoulias (Michael Gambon) to inform him that no funds are forthcoming for the project. At the same time Zissou’s glamorous wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston) announces her defection; she’s gravitating back, it would appear, toward her first husband, Steve’s oceanographic arch-rival, the slick, smug, well-heeled Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum)–although in truth it’s difficult to tell what Eleanor is up to. As if this weren’t enough, a clueless young pilot from Kentucky, Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), shows up suggesting that he might be Zissou’s illegitimate son; he’s soon convinced not only to join the team but also to sink his inheritance into the expedition, which finally gets underway under the watchful eye of bond company numbers-cruncher Bill Ubell (Bud Cort). At the same time a hard-bitten (and pregnant) journalist named Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett) comes along to give Zissou a much-needed dose of publicity.

What follows is a shambles of interconnected plotlines that include the halting efforts of Steve and Ned to bond, a process complicated by the fact that both are interested in Jane; the jealousy of Klaus over Steve’s preoccupation with Ned; and Zissou’s theft of Hennessey’s expensive equipment. In the middle of all this is dropped a truly weird, atrociously staged episode involving the ship being taken over by Filipino pirates, which necessitates a gonzo rescue mission to save Bill. The welter of story threads pretty much submerges the Zissou-as-Ahab angle of the piece, which–had it been refashioned in the way the Coen Brothers did “The Odyssey” in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”– could have given the movie some much-needed structure. Instead what we get is a desultory collection of incidents tossed together pretty much at random, with a finale involving the shark that smacks of reconciliation rather than revenge. (If it’s intended as a reversal on Melville, it’s not coherent enough to qualify.) And since Anderson has never been very fastidious in terms of composition, pacing or consistency of tone, the combination of flat, messy material and maladroit execution (the pirate attack and rescue stuff is especially sloppy) becomes almost stultifying. The performers are, nearly without exception, lost at sea. Murray’s customarily peevish persona here descends into an air of understandable boredom, and Wilson’s laid-back style into virtual somnolence. Elsewhere, Huston, Goldblum and Dafoe go the ultra-arch route, italicizing every line reading and exaggerating each pose. (Huston seems to be channeling Morticia from “The Addams Family.”) Blanchett adds a welcome dose of energy to the proceedings, and Gambon and Cort escape the general air of drugged-out malaise; but their contributions are hardly enough to relieve the tedium.

One does have to give some credit to Robert Yeoman’s cinematography, which, in the more sedate scenes, luxuriates in the colorful seascapes and ornate film festival settings–though elsewhere (the attack and rescue sequences, once again) it deteriorates markedly. The production design by Mark Friedberg has couple of nice moments, particularly one that provides an explanatory tour of the Zissou ship. And the animated sea-creature work of Henry Selick, who directed the marvelous “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” are enchanting; a pity there’s so little of it. On the other hand, the background score by the usually reliable Mark Mothersbaugh is ineffectual, with the occasional intrusions of classical excerpts coming across as particularly pointless.

There’s no question that “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” lives in a world all its own; it’s not like anything else you’re likely to see on the screen this year. But it’s not enough to be different; the simple act of piling up eccentricities is fruitless when the heap has no shape or function. “The Life Aquatic” is a movie abysmal, a rickety vessel that’s certainly not see-worthy.