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In A FISH CALLED WANDA, veteran director Charles Crichton and scriptwriter-star John Cleese create a dazzling quilt from various strands of English and American comedy. The plot, in which four disparate characters attempt a daring heist, comes from Ealing caper comedies, such as Crichton's own THE LAVENDER HILL MOB. Cleese and Michael Palin, as the hit man with a stutter and a love of animals, come from the anarchic tradition of Monty Python. The movie pays savage tribute to another Ealing comedy, THE LADYKILLERS, as Palin attempts to kill a witness to the gang's getaway. The glamorous con woman (Jamie Lee Curtis) is from Preston Sturges's great comedy THE LADY EVE, while Kevin Kline provides his own unique feverish comic intensity. |
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Audiences around the world were not alone in appreciating this sparkling British-set comedy, as stars John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin so enjoyed the experience that they went on to make a second feature together, the sadly disappointing Fierce Creatures. The comic credentials are impeccable, for not only were Cleese and Palin Monty Python colleagues, but director Charles Crichton was also responsible for those Ealing classics Hue and Cry, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Titfield Thunderbolt. The American pair more than play their part, however, with Kline wonderfully manic as the unhinged Otto and winning a best supporting actor Oscar in the process. The film even had the unlikely effect of making Cleese something of a sex symbol. A real belter.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Deft, blackish comedy with a little romance thrown in; its humour relied too much on Cleese's familiar, if expert, performance as an overbearing, uptight buffoon.
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