BUT JUST LOOK AT THE PRETTY: So what do Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou have in common (aside from the fact that I've seen them both in the past few days? Their awards-deservingness. Both are muddled messes of a story--POTO due to godawful diction from many of the singers as well as the Lloyd Webber tendency toward bombast and inanity, and Life Aquatic due to enfant terrible Wes Anderson trying to grow up too fast and tell a story about whether it's better to burn out than fade away--but both deserve Oscars for the astounding technical work involved.
POTO is the more "Oscar traditional" film--a period piece with massive sets, over the top costumes, and much bosom being heaved. I can understand why Dave Poland said in late November after seeing the movie, but before the advent of Million Dollar Baby and the end-of-year critical awards-gushing for Sideways and Eternal Sunshine, that it was a likely front-runner for best picture. It's old-fashioned and pretty to look at, which has proven to be a winning best picture formula in the past, even when the movie's not that good. The problem? A ludicrous love triangle that might well have worked well on stage (I've never seen the stage show), with the problems amplified by the fact that Emmy Rossum generates no chemistry whatsoever with her "true love" Patrick Wilson (though Rossum's bosom heaves appealingly throughout). Rossum and Gerard Butler (as the Phantom) sing solidly enough throughout, though Rossum's trilly soprano grows a tad tiresome. Expect well-deserved Oscar nominations for set and costume design, a nod for the original song sung over the credits, and maybe, because Oscar loves women who sing and the field is so weak, a nod for Rossum.
The Life Aquatic, on the other hand, is unlikely to get any Oscar attention at all. The film's a bit of a muddled mess, perhaps in part because Anderson's regular co-writer, Owen Wilson, has been so busy making movies that Anderson co-wrote this one with pretentious indie filmmaker Noah Baumbach. Wilson nonetheless appears, doing a bad Kentucky accent, as an airplane pilot who might be Steve Zissou's long-lost son. Ultimately, Zissou, his son, and his crew of oddballs go on a quest to find the "jaguar shark" that killed Zissou's friend, while getting waylaid by pirates, fighting with a competing oceanographer (Jeff Goldblum), dealing with a near mutiny by angry interns, and addressing romantic entanglements. There's so much plot there that nothing really seems to happen (though stuff blows up really nice). But the true joy is the detail of the sets and design. Somehow, Anderson managed to convince Disney to shell out money to build a full-scale cut away replica of Zissou's ship, which is fully dressed. Anderson does several tracking shots through the ship, letting us see the full scale of the design work, littered with little details he leaves. Similarly, excerpts from Zissou's documentaries nail the vaguely retro feel that Anderson's films always have--that the film takes place not in the now nor in the past, but somewhere where both the past and present coexist. And, as always, Anderson comes up with an eclectic and quirky soundtrack, partially from composer Mark Mothersbaugh, partially from his own bizarre record collection, and partly in the form of Portugese bossa nova renditions of David Bowie songs. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn't live up to the detail and love lavished on it in those areas. If only it did, it would be one to truly remember.
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