Review of A Fish Called Wanda (1988) by Oxana — 19 May 2014

What do you get when you mix a pathological liar who is turned on by foreign languages, a psychotic moron who refuses to be called stupid, a passionate lover of animals with an uncontrollable stutter, and a straight-laced British barrister who kind of hates his life? Well, that's the recipe for a hilariously good time. The story starts out so simple, because we have a band of criminals who have stolen a fortune in jewels. The problem is, being typical crooks, they simply can't share and so they start double-crossing one another. As a result the complexity of who knows what increases, and insanity starts to take over. This insanity is only accentuated by the fact that the characters themselves are so crazy. The problem with A Fish Called Wanda is that the comedy doesn't really hit very well at the beginning. The story takes awhile to get going, and the characters have overly annoying personalities, so it takes some time before I'm able to make that mental shift from disliking their character traits into laughing at them. It all seems to gel better when John Cleese is introduced as a more normal stable force, the contrast of his role against the crazy crooks makes for some great humor.

John Cleese is ideal for the role of the straight man. He perfectly pulls off the proper English gentleman Archie, and yet you can see his inner frustration over how stifled he feels by the constant need to be distinguished. Jamie Lee Curtis is my least favorite of the quartet of leads. She is adequate as the seductress who takes advantage of the men around her with her body. My problem is that she doesn't sell me on any emotional transition which she supposedly has leading up to the conclusion of the film. It feels strange and sudden, almost as if it's purely because someone is able to turn her on the most with his foreign words. On the flip side, Kevin Kline is an absolute acting chameleon. I swear I have seen him in so many different roles, with such diverse personalities, and he masters them all. His turn in this film as the Nietzsche-quoting mad man is brilliant. He is utterly moronic, and yet he delivers the lines like he genuinely believes every word he says is genius. After I was done watching this film I expected to turn around and see his face staring in the window at me with that wild look in his eyes. However my favorite character of the film is st...st...st...st...stuttering Ken played by Michael Palin. His entire storyline in the film is laugh-out-loud funny, and when he has his final conversation with John Cleese and can't stop stuttering I can't even explain why, but I laugh uncontrollably.

That's the thing with this comedy. As I pointed out earlier, it does struggle a bit with the humor at the outset. Yet when the comedy starts to hit, it is amazingly effective. I understand that we need the story setup in order to bring the laughs later in the film. I just wish it had slipped in a few more solid gags during that story setup. But it feels like a lot of the humor in this film is based less on slapstick-style comedy and more on the quirks of these characters. Perhaps with more frequent viewing you can come in already finding these people funny and then enjoy some laughs at how odd they are from the beginning. My problem is that I only saw this once a long time ago, and only recently rediscovered it, so the characters were basically all new to me again. Still, I don't want to dwell excessively on perceived shortcomings in this film. It is a fun experience, and was able to elicit several laugh-out-loud moments from me, something that seems to be considerably less common in modern movies. I actually purchased a copy of this film for a discounted price, and I'll be delighted to explore it more and more in the coming years. If you haven't seen A Fish Called Wanda, then I highly recommend you give it a try.