Some directors, whether by nature or by design, end up as tightrope walkers, constantly skirting disaster, and you find yourself watching partially just for the thrill of seeing the fall or how it's staved off. Wes Anderson is probably incapable of doing anything else. All characters must have quirks and realism is just too dull. In 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums, for example, the wheels definitely came off after a number of interesting wobbles.
Here they just about stay on, even with some rather pointless Finding Nemo-style fish thrown in as Bill Murray does his Bill Murray as Jacques Cousteau on a quest for a big shark and various heavyweight actors such as Anjelica Huston and Michael Gambon ham it up around him. Willem Dafoe gets to try on a camp German accent and Owen Wilson is Owen Wilson. It's about as profound as the toddlers' end of the pool in its meditations on the meaning of life, but at least the dialogue is crisply unpredictable and the wanton quirkiness mostly works for chuckles.
6/10
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