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Maybe I'm not in the right demographics for this film, but I couldn't grasp the humor. I grew up on Jacques Cousteau specials and expected this to be a satire or parody of them. And there are some items like that, such as the red hats and the ship named "Belafonte" (instead of "Calypso"). But Steve Zissou seemed less a parody or satire of Cousteau than a recast of a jerk in place of lovable Jacques. Parodies usually exaggerate the subject, but this seems to go 180 degrees from it. Instead of a classy, principled, passionate Frenchman with a close-knit family, we get a crude, materialistic, bored American who has explored more moist places on land than undersea.

Throughout the movie I kept wondering if the director either a) doesn't really know much about Cousteau and doesn't really care because that's not the point or b) knows MUCH more about Cousteau than I do, such as his personality in making documentary film deals, and is lampooning that esoteric material.

Maybe it's like one of those dry New Yorker cartoons. If I look at it long enough, maybe I'll get the jokes.

I was in fourth grade, the thick of my comic-reading years, when this show came out. I couldn't believe my luck that my favorite DC heroes were now on TV.

The stories may seem corny now, but they were played straight, unlike the campy or downright comical Super Friends.

But some things really annoyed me. Most basically: What was so hard about getting the costumes right? Almost every character had such changes to his costume that even I at age 9 could notice (and still remember at age 44!).

1. The show gave Aquaman black boots. In the comic, he wore no boots, just the green tights.

2. The show gave Flash yellow gauntlets and a regular yellow belt. In the comic, he wears a yellow lighting belt and lightning bands around his forearms with red gloves.

3. The show reversed Kid Flash's color schemes.

4. The show gave Hawkman some kind of claw/glove on his right hand. It could emit beams of some kind. The comic Hawkman fought bare-handed, though sometimes with a mace. And he didn't have a pet hawk in the comics.

5. The Atom wore a plain blue shirt and trunks, broken by a black belt, instead of the comic's red and blue shirt, blue belt, and no trunks on red tights.

6. Green Lantern's costume came out unscathed. But he has this alien buddy Kiro instead of the Inuit buddy Pieface. Never figured that one.

7. We get Wonder Girl and Speedy in the Teen Titans, but we don't get Wonder Woman or Green Arrow in the Justice League of America. Go figure.

This show left me wondering for years whether Filmation got the rights to the characters, but not to all of the costumes. At least when Super Friends came out, they got the costumes right. And they gave us Wonder Woman, too!

Right now I am trying to figure out what to do this Christmas, since the family tradition is a-tremor. The thought of being alone on Christmas deeply saddens me, and I think it goes back to seeing little Ebenezar Scrooge left behind in boarding school while all the other kids had families to go home to for Christmas.

I cried just like Mr. Magoo's older Scrooge did when he saw himself as a kid singing:

When you're alone, alone in the world When you're alone in the world Blown-away leaves get blown in the world Swirled-away leaves get swirled

A hand for each hand was planned for the world Why don't my fingers reach? Millions of grains of sand in the world Why's mine a lonely beach?

Where are the heels to click to my clack? Where is the voice to answer mine back? I'm all alone in the WOOOOORLD!!!

None of the other versions caught this scene the way this one does. Not Bugs Bunny, Bill Murray, Albert Finney, Mickey Mouse. Maybe Alistair Sim, sort of.

Simplistic, yes, but it's the scene that still sticks in my throat as I choke back an adult tear. It's the scene that makes this version, truly unique, all alone in the world.