Saw this tonight with Jeff Daniels in attendance. His Q&A afterward was very interesting (will edit this post with a link to detailed notes after I write them up)... the movie is very good. It is very autobiographical but for me only the good things about that showed up in the movie rather than the bad things. It's charming and funny while being painful and depressing...
it IS pretty Anderson-esque in subject matter and tone but the composition is not nearly so formal and there's more there with the character work for me... I liked this more than Life Aquatic right away.
so yeah, good movie. more later...
EDIT: finally wrote up my full-on notes with the Q&A coverage of Jeff Daniels. read it
HERE