It makes perfect sense that Wes Anderson should conduct his latest voyage of idiosyncratic whimsy, “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” on the high seas. Like an excitable marine biologist, Anderson (“Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums”) delights in exotic, brightly colored fauna — the main difference being, his happen to wear Smurf-blue Speedos and croon David Bowie songs in Portuguese.

In stocking his cinematic aquarium with these human oddities, Anderson has always succeeded in affecting a baseline current of feeling and lucid emotion. That's not necessarily the case here. “The Life Aquatic” is so blithely abstract that when one prominent character meets an untimely end, nobody in the audience — or the movie itself — is meant to register even a brief gulp of regret. So, “The Life Aquatic” lacks nerve endings — it's still crazy fun, a beguiling splash of ironic adventure and inner-child fantasy that builds into a veritable tsunami of outlandishness.

If Anderson and new writing partner Noah Baumbach (“Kicking and Screaming”) aren't fans of “Buckaroo Bonzai” and Belgian boy sleuth Tintin, I'll surrender my Gen X decoder ring forthwith. Bill Murray is his noncommittal, deadpan self as Steve Zissou, a Jacques Cousteau-style celebrity oceanographer in career decline who embarks on a dangerous (and somewhat embarrassing) mission to find the mythical “jaguar shark” who ate his best friend (Seymour Cassel). Joining Steve and his gallant crew (all of whom are equipped with matching Glocks) is pregnant British journalist Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett), Steve's wife and business partner Eleanor (Anjelica Huston) — who seems to be drifting back toward her ex-husband, Steve's pompous arch-rival Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum) — and airline pilot Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), who may or may not be Steve's long-lost son.

Between pirate attacks, intern mutanies and encounters with computer-generated sea life, Anderson revisits many of his favorite themes: surrogate fathers, romantic rivalries and — this one always kills me — the bittersweet tragedy of unrealized genius. Anderson's affinity for flame-outs (recall the failed prodigies of “The Royal Tenenbaums”) is one of the great lingering mysteries of his craft, and one of the most rewarding. “The Life Aquatic” is a mild but meaningful rebuke of childhood idealization, and a wistful paean to childhood itself. As a technician, Anderson is less mysterious than extremely distinctive. His shots are diorama-pieces, center- blocked, strikingly colored, with the background and foreground focused in such a way that they appear close together. In other words, they look like fishbowls — and you have to marvel at the life inside.