The premise of The Life Aquatic seems to hold unlimited potential: Bill Murray as the leader of whacky Cousteau-like dive team. The cast includes Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, Angelica Huston and Jeff Goldblum.

The story opens with Murray at the premier of his latest undersea documentary, in which his longtime friend is eaten by an as yet unidentified species of shark. In short order, we learn that his character has grown irrelevant in the world of undersea exploration, that he's past his prime and that he may have a grown illegitimate son, Owen Wilson, who's about to join the team. We then follow Murray's attempts to raise money for a new film to document his killing of the shark, and to then track it through pirate-infested waters on a shoe-string budget.

The Life Aquatic is a funny movie -- not funny as in falling out of the chair laughing but as in lots of smiles and small chuckles. To fully appreciate it, though, you probably have to have grown up not just watching the old Cousteau specials, but loving them, what with their for-entertainment-purposes-only dive outfits and corny story lines. The Life Aquatic does a great job of parodying them without being mean-spirited.

At the same time, there's little diving actually done, and what there is has a Monty Python's Flying Circus feel to it. Still, the basic story is so tied to the memory of Cousteau that it's impossible not to look at this as a dive movie -- and a good one at that.