The film is, of course, painfully funny, employing the same melancholic humour and oddball characters that made ‘Rushmore’ and ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ the great films they were. Murray gets all the best lines; both the withering put downs of a has-been angry at the world, and the surreal non-sequiturs of a drunk eccentric. But the rest of the cast are excellent too – eclectic assortments are an Anderson trademark, and here we see Anjelica Huston as Steve’s estranged wife, Jeff Goldblum in the role of his nemesis, Owen Wilson as the man who might be Steve’s son, and Willem Dafoe playing a violent German with a father complex. All have their quirks, with Jeff Goldblum particularly enjoyable in the same evil bastard mode he employed in ‘Igby Goes Down’ (a film that more people should see, by the way). Goldblum gets one of the most horribly comical moments in ‘The Life Aquatic,’ in a scene that could have come straight from a Farrelly brothers movie.

And ‘horribly comical’ is a rather apt description of the film as a whole – halfway through, as you laugh happily at the witticisms and embarrassing situations on offer, yet another amusing scene suddenly becomes one of real tension and tragedy, and you find yourself wondering uneasily whether you’re supposed to be laughing any more. The tone changes completely for several minutes, the characters are all abused and mistreated, then Steve Zissou saves the day – briefly displaying the kind of heroism that he was supposed to have possessed during his youth, when a ‘Team Zissou’ feature was something to be eagerly looked forward to. And just as suddenly, crisis averted, Steve mumbles another humorous line and the film shifts back to its original pace. The experience is strange and vaguely unsettling, and leaves you feeling uncomfortable about laughing at these dysfunctional characters for a few minutes after it happens. It’s a brave move in what is supposed to be a straightforward comedy, the suicide scene in ‘Tenenbaums’ taken a step further, and it very much enriches Steve’s character and the empathy you feel with him, though I imagine it will prove a bit much for some cinemagoers.

Surreal dislocation is a theme that runs through the film. Zissou is a documentary maker, and ‘The Life Aquatic’ is the title of both his film and Anderson’s. The lines blur occasionally, and a scene from the film we are watching sometimes turns out to be a part of Zissou’s work. Anderson shoots in the washed-out colours of 1970s film stock, creating a sense of timewarp, reinforcing the impression that Team Zissou is stuck in the past. Anderson delights in playing with your expectations, setting up and tearing down all sorts of comfortable movie clichés, so that by the end you really believe that anything might happen.

Two things I must mention – first, the soundtrack is almost exclusively composed of Bowie numbers, translated into Portuguese and sung by one of the Team Zissou crew members. Very cool, and it makes for a nice ambience. Secondly, none of the sea creatures encountered by Steve or his crew are real, and nor are they CGI – rather, they are stop-motion creations, and look absolutely gorgeous. I have long pined for the glory days of stop-motion animation, when movie monsters looked so much better than they do in modern films. There is something very solid and massive about a clay model that just cannot be recreated by a computer – think how much more real the pit rancor seems in ‘Return of the Jedi’ than do the various insipid creatures in the fighting arena in ‘Attack of the Clones.’

I have read bad reviews of ‘The Life Aquatic,’ and can see how the juxtaposition of comedy and violence and the unsympathetic ruthlessness of Steve’s character could put some off. It’s not for everybody, perhaps, but the comedy is so funny and the cast so good that I would call this Anderson’s best film so far, and urge you to give it a try.