Interminable Aquatic

Saw "The Life Aquatic" today and could not wait for it to end. I should probably be irritated that I've lost two plus hours of my life but oh well. I liked Wes Anderson's first two movies, but the self-consciously artsy arrangements that bordered on being too precious in those films are full-blown pretentious indulgences in this film. The characters are simply caricatures and the story nothing more than a silly contrivance that provides an excuse for the visuals. Do you remeber the theatrical productions staged in "Rushmore"? They were so obviously juvenile that the few brief scenes we witnessed were able to elicit laughs. Well this movie is pretty much like that but it's not funny when it goes on for more than two hours without a single believable character. A shameful waste of a good cast. Perhaps this was just a bump in the road.