Wes Anderson has always maintained a high level of quality, but his sparkling record with the critics has one unfortunate blemish. Since his early successes, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson has established himself as one of American cinema’s great auteurs, and he has developed a devoted fan base throughout his career.

Anderson’s best movies are often showered with praise, particularly his biggest hits like Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest H๏τel. Anderson’s idiosyncratic style has gained him legions of admirers, but this unique approach didn’t spring up overnight.

As Anderson blazed his own trail in the late 1990s and early 2000s, his style gradually started to take shape. Looking back at his early hits, it’s clear to see that they aren’t quite as abstract and quirky as 2025’s The Phoenician Scheme, which often resembles a Tex Avery cartoon. Anderson’s reputation took one big hit as his artistic persona took shape.

Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic Deserves More Love

Critics Were Too Harsh On The Life Aquatic In 2004

Back in 2004, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was met with mixed reviews, but with the benefit of hindsight, it looks like Anderson’s comedic adventure movie was simply ahead of its time. It has a 57% score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is uncharacteristically low for the director.

Despite its low critical score, The Life Aquatic sits at a healthy 82% on the Popcornmeter, which measures audience reactions on Rotten Tomatoes. This reflects the fact that it has gained a cult following over the years, and it has been reclaimed as a misunderstood masterpiece.

People’s views are no longer aligned with how critics treated The Life Aquatic at the time. Rewatching it in 2025 makes its poor reviews seem strange, since it’s just as funny, creative and deceptively heartfelt as any of Anderson’s movies, with some gorgeous visuals and a stylish soundtrack of Portuguese-language David Bowie covers to boot.

Although The Life Aquatic has had something of a resurgence, it’s still treated as a secondary, non-essential work in Anderson’s career. The quality of his filmography means that it has some stiff compeтιтion, but The Life Aquatic may have been Anderson’s most important movie in his artistic evolution.

How The Life Aquatic Has Gotten Better With Age

Anderson’s Career Now Makes The Life Aquatic Look Even Better

Watching The Life Aquatic back shows just how important it was in Anderson’s career. The Royal Tenenbaums follows the saga of one quirky family, but The Life Aquatic takes Anderson’s playful approach to the extreme. It’s the first one of his movies that doesn’t appear to take place in the real world at all.

The brief stop-motion animations and the mythological sea creatures both highlight The Life Aquatic‘s true nature as a whimsical fable. Anderson dresses up a weighty story about fatherhood and regret in some child-friendly picture-book visuals.

Like his most critically acclaimed movies, The Life Aquatic gets a lot of mileage from the tension between form and substance.

To the credit of The Life Aquatic, it’s worth watching for more than its place within Anderson’s career. Even for newcomers who might not be accustomed to the director’s style, The Life Aquatic offers a lot to love. Its unconventional appearance is wrapped around a deeply emotional story about one man searching for revenge as he grieves his best friend’s death.

For all its cutesy creatures and ᴅᴇᴀᴅpan humor, The Life Aquatic delivers a gut-punch when it needs to. It’s hard to shake the image of Steve and his crew crammed into a submarine, watching the shark drift peacefully by, or that of his moment of calm outside the theater right at the end.

Bill Murray & Wes Anderson’s Partnership Peaked With The Life Aquatic

Murray Has Always Had A Feel For Anderson’s Style

The Life Aquatic is one of Bill Murray’s best movies, and it’s a perfect showcase of what makes the actor so special. While Murray is capable of getting plenty of laughs as a charming goofball in movies like Ghostbusters and Caddyshack, his most interesting performances come when his character has more pathos, like in Groundhog Day or Lost in Translation.

Murray delivers a ᴅᴇᴀᴅpan masterclass in The Life Aquatic, keying into Anderson’s wry dialogue perfectly, but he also sees the heart in Steve Zissou. For all his eccentricities and his showmanship, Steve is a tragic character willing to live and die for his art, even if that destroys any relationship he has on land.

The central metaphor of The Life Aquatic wouldn’t work without Murray’s warm presence. He manages to reconcile the comedy with the dull ache of Steve’s drive to find meaning in his work. When he is ultimately faced with the chance to carry out his self-ᴀssigned mission, he lets it pᴀss. It’s here that Murray shows a deft hand, leaving a mark without overdoing it.

A lot of the best performances in Anderson’s movies come from actors who don’t sit flush with the director’s neatly-manicured style. Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest H๏τel and Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums are unforgettable because they oppose and disrupt Anderson’s flow. Murray does the opposite, but it’s just as unforgettable in its own way.

Murray brings Anderson’s script to life, embodying Steve Zissou’s rough charms so completely that it seems as though no other actor could play the role. To watch The Life Aquatic is to watch a director and an actor in perfect harmony, which is apt considering the film’s reflection of Anderson’s artistic pursuits.