Did you get it? I think maybe I did. A quick browse through the comments for this film shows up certain facts quite starkly...
1. A lot of people watched it because it's a Wes Anderson film.
2. A lot of people thought it was going to be an out-and-out comedy.
3. A lot of people don't get it.
I have never seen a Wes Anderson film, indeed I have to put my hand up and state that I hadn't even heard of the man before I bought this DVD on the spur of the moment and watched till the credits. Also the only thing I knew about the movie was that it had some strange effects in it, something that quickly becomes evident, and it's quite intentional.
I don't know how precisely to sum it up, and frankly I think that's a good thing. It's not a comedy, although it's definitely fun to watch, and it's not... well, it's not. It's an experience. We are taken along for the ride on a kind of cut-price, rapidly fading and thinly disguised Jacques Cousteau style adventure, and the plot is used as a rope from which to hang a lot of little vignettes and character development as we go on through the movie.
The characters are each annoying, likable, lovable, dumb, funny and serious, the way real people are. The audience are asked to sit back and let the lives of the crew wash over them as the adventure unfolds, and we see it all and are by turns charmed, entertained and wounded as the story unfolds. The underwater scenes, rather than being hyper-real as one might expect in this day and age, are mixes of live action, CGI and colourful stop-motion animation, all dayglo coloured and completely unreal looking. Some of the events and creatures the crew run into are just as bizarre and completely fake looking, as the director intended. I leave finding the reason for this up to you, although I have my own ideas why.
I enjoyed the movie, it was an experience and it was thought provoking in a way that most modern films aren't. It used very obvious visuals as metaphors, it had characters we liked, hated and cared about and it had genuine pain and laughter in the mix too. Yes it's a bit messy, a bit unreal, a bit tragic in places, but it made me damn glad I'd watched it and gave me a hankering to check out old Jacques Cousteau documentaries again, since they got the look and feel of the boat and it's motley crew so right. If you haven't seen this film, go watch it and enjoy it for what it is, not with a preconceived notion of what to expect.