1.11.2005

Steve Zissou & The Most Favoritest Comedies of the Year

StinkyLu & MrStinky finally caught an afternoon screening of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou... Just amazing. A mellow, pitch-perfect satire of what StinkyLulu's not entirely sure -- '70s cinematic masculinity? Jacques Cousteau? nature adventurers?

It matters little. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was simply a brilliant quiet comedy. Get this: the art direction was f'n hilarious. And the performances? Criminy, they were good, and frickin funny to boot -- especially Willem Dafoe (as a needy German assistant explorer), Cate Blanchett (that accent!) and -- of course -- Bill Murray, whose just turning in one bittersweet zinger of a performance after another. The only performance that seemed off-pitch was Owen Wilson, but that may just be a StinkyLulu problem. An actor more accustomed to the noisy comedies of the Zoolander/Starsky & Hutch school, with folks like Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn & Will Ferrell. Not that there's anything wrong with that... But if the pivotal role of Ned had been played by someone like Mark Wahlberg (see his f'n BRILLIANT turn in the otherwise befuddled I Heart Huckabees) or even Jason Schwartzman, I betcha the whole of The Life Aquatic would have been the stronger...

So. StinkyLulu's thinking that The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou might be StinkyLulu's most favoritest comedy of the year. Though that might be the warm afterglow of a treatsy movie experience -- inevitably tempered by the snarkiness that emerges with the passage of time.

BUT with the idea of "MOST FAVORITEST COMEDIES" it seems as good a time as any to list the ones from this year that have made the short list:
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Shaun of the Dead
Mean Girls

1 comment:

Criticlasm said...

I am interested in your take on I heart Huckabees, which you vaguely alluded to. I loved Isabel Huppert, and actually had a blast at that movie. If the life aquatic is nearly a entertaining and affirming, count me in.