I have an odd relationship with Wes Anderson’s films. I’ve seen them all but Bottle Rocket and have hated Owen and/or Luke Wilson in every single one. I enjoy them all but, having seen them once, have no desire to ever see them again.
So it is with The Life Aquatic. Good film. Quirky. Peculiar. Dialogue oriented. But basically just an exercise in auteur filmmaking without any specific purpose or point to get across.
Some films are meant to purely entertain, some films are meant to illuminate some great injustice, some films are meant to illustrate specific moments in time, Anderson’s films are apparently just meant to allow him to make movies. That doesn’t make them bad. On the contrary, they’re almost always enjoyable. It just kind of makes them pointless.