Wes Anderson Royal Tenenbaums" was nominated for an Academy Award and ranked by an "Empire" poll as the 159th greatest film ever made. Anderson's next feature was "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004) about a Jacques Cousteau-esque documentary filmmaker played by Bill Murray. It serves as a classic example of Anderson's style, but its critical reception was less favorable than his previous films, and its box office did not match the heights of "The Royal Tenenbaums". In September 2006, Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen released a tongue-in-cheek "letter of intervention" for Anderson's artistic "malaise" following the disappointing commercial and
The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou as both Jim Henson's Muppets and Frosted Flakes' Tony the Tiger are misused as random source material for jokes that simply fail to deliver," adding that "The idea of Peter going overboard with his newfound desire to bully his family and friends is also not quite as funny as it could have been." In a negative review by Brett Love of TV Squad. he noted "[the episode] was something of the opposite of "Peter's Two Dads." Where that one excelled with the structure of the story, this one wasn't as strong. The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou "The Tan Aquatic