No review of this film can genuinely assure you that you're going to enjoy it. A Fish Called Wanda is straight comedy, with no pretensions as high as satire or incisive social commentary. This is a movie that has to soar or crash entirely on the basis of whether it makes you laugh. I personally found the film uproariously funny. I was watching the film after the rest of my family had gone to bed and it was all I could do to muffle my guffaws enough to avoid disturbing their sleep. Having read about twenty reviews or comments about the film, I was surprised to find that about three of the twenty writers found little humor in the film, while the remainder pretty much saw it as I do. Those who did not care for the film generally describe the "attempts" at humor as lame, juvenile, or too drawn out. I've occasionally had the experience myself of not responding to a film that many others find funny, so I know the sensation well. As I've said before, there's just no accounting for taste in humor. There's no point telling someone they ought to find something funny if they don't. All I can suggest to you in relation to this film is that the odds seem to be about 85% that you'll laugh like crazy. I suppose you can gage the odds a bit better by asking yourself if you tend to like physical humor, slapstick, armpit and sashaying butt humor, humor based on eccentricities leading to humiliation, dog-crushing and fish-swallowing humor, and speech impediment humor. This is not highbrow humor in any sense, but it's generally lowbrow humor of the sidesplitting kind. John Cleese and Charles Crichton conceived the story, Cleese wrote the screenplay, and Crichton directed the film.

Historical Background: Charles Crichton, the director of A Fish Called Wanda, was born August 6th, 1910 in Wallasey, England. Crichton was educated at Oxford and then took a job as a film editor. He worked in that capacity on The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Crichton's first feature film as a director was For Those in Peril, in 1944. Crichton's career peak came in the late forties and early fifties, when he directed such hits as Hue and Cry (1947), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), and The Titfield Thunderbold (1953). All those films were sparkling comedies, making Crichton an apt choice to direct the present film, even thirty-five years later. Crichton occasionally made dramatic films as well, such as The Divided Heart (1954). The low point of Crichton's career came when he was forced out of the director's role for the Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) because of a dispute with actor/producer Burt Lancaster. Crichton's surprise comeback with A Fish Called Wanda (1988) earned him an Oscar nomination as Best Director.

The Story: The story revolves around four miscreants who team up for a diamond heist from a London jeweler. There's Georges Thomason (Tom Georgeson), the mastermind of the robbery. There's Ken Pile (Michael Palin), a delicate young man with a severe stutter and a love for tropical fish. There's Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis), the only woman on the team and a rapacious seducer who uses her female charms unconscionably to manipulate every man in her life (which is very nearly every man in the film). Then, the team is completed by Wanda's faux-brother, Otto (Kevin Kline), who is actually her rowdy lover, an ex-CIA marksman, and a would-be philosopher with the actual I.Q. of a moron. George and Ken are British while Wanda and Otto are Americans. Despite their personal eccentricities, the four pull off the heist with remarkable efficiency and skill. Then the real action begins.

The greedy Wanda wants everything for herself. Her basic plan is to use Otto to double-cross George and Ken and then to knock Otto unconscious and abscond with the diamonds for herself. She's a sexy woman who knows how to use her appeal to manipulate men and has no qualms about doing so. Wanda has Otto call in an anonymous tip to the police indicating George's involvement in the heist and his address. The American pair then goes to collect the diamonds from the hiding place, only to discover that George has taken the precaution of stashing them elsewhere. George is arrested and hires the barrister Archie Leach (John Cleese) to defend him. If Leach can't get him off, George's backup plan is to plea bargain a minimum sentence using the diamonds as leverage along with the identity of his partners.

Wanda decides that the best hope of locating the diamonds before George is released is to seduce Leach and extract from him whatever secrets George passes along to his attorney. Leach is a family man with a rather frigid, purse-lipped wife, Wendy (Maria Aitken), and a remote daughter, Portia (Cynthia Cleese). He's also prim and proper – as only the British know how to be. Like almost every middle-aged, klutzy guy, he's easily flattered into believing that an incredibly foxy, young woman could actually be wildly attracted to him.

I won't outline the remainder of the story, but I'll mention a few of the highlight scenes. Ken's speech impediment is a continual source of amusement and all the more so because the sadistic Otto likes nothing more than to mock it. Otto is pretty dense, despite intellectual pretensions. He's convinced, for example, that Aristotle was Belgium and that the Gettysburg Address is where Lincoln lived. He's highly insistent that no one call him "stupid." Them's fightin' words! He's too stupid to realize he's stupid, but Wanda finally drives the point home forcefully.

One great scene takes place in Leach's home. Wendy and Portia have supposedly gone out for the evening, but come home early, just as Leach is preparing to deliver a cocktail to his minx, Wanda. Otto has also showed up to ensure that Wanda's seductive activities don't exceed what his jealous nature will allow. Otto and Wanda hide behind a couple of curtains, but the mix of people in the room just isn't going to sort itself out without some riotous absurdities.

In another scene, Archie has taken Wanda to a love nest – a flat belonging to a colleague who is away in Hong Kong. Archie has stripped down to his birthday suit when a real estate agent shows up with a family that has just leased the apartment. It doesn't help that they are old acquaintances of Archie.

The single funniest bit, for me at least, has to do with Ken, who's been assigned the task of bumping off the only witness, Mrs. Coady (Patricia Hayes), who can link George to the robbery. She's an old lady with three lapdogs that she enjoys walking. Ken is a gamer but not a very talented assassin. Ken's an animal lover, but each of his attempts to do in Mrs. Coady culminates in the grotesque death of one of her dogs instead, which pains Ken almost as much as Mrs. Coady.

Later, Otto brutally torments Ken to extract the whereabouts of the diamonds. He shoves potato chips up Ken's nose and a pear in his mouth. Then Otto proceeds to swallow Ken's beloved fish one by one, saving the one called "Wanda" for the last. Astute viewers will realize immediately that the film has to culminate in Ken taking his revenge on the mean-spirited Otto, but the way in which it occurs is priceless and milked for every possible laugh.

Themes: Though this film is devoid of any deep philosophical purpose, it does touch on a few casual themes. Most evident amid the wisp of social commentary is a clash between the worst of British and American cultures. Neither group, here, comes across as good ambassadors for their national lifestyles. Otto hates the English ("they just wait for the weekend so they can dress up as ballerinas and whip each other into a frenzy") and Archie doesn't think much of Otto or the America that Otto represents. This is a screwball American encountering a British fop. Both Otto and Wanda say and do what would be unthinkable for the Brits. The American Wanda is sexually provocative and uninhibited and only has to dress to kill to awaken Archie's deeply repressed sexual urges. She cracks his restrictive shell with her sexy playfulness. Wanda is every middle-aged man's Harlequin fantasy: the hot, marauding wonder woman who's going to spirit him away from his dreary existence and into a wonderland of passionate delights.

Production Values: The story was the joint work of director Charles Crichton and producer/actor John Cleese. Cleese wrote the dialog. The film is a compromise, in a sense, between the inanity of the Monty Python style of humor and the gentle sophistication of the Ealing style of comedy with which Crichton was associated. Cleese pokes fun at a lot of easy targets, including stutterers, gay men, sexually-deluded men, mercenary, seductive women, up-tight Brits, and boisterous, egotistical Americans. There's a clever segment in which some very kinky sex involving Otto and Wanda gets intercut with the prim and proper Archie and Wendy fumbling through their bedtime routine.

The funny bits and lines are nicely distributed throughout the ensemble cast. John Cleese, the veteran of the Monty Python Troupe and Fawlty Towers, is one of the funniest actors around. Michael Palin, Cleese's old teammate from the Pythons is brilliant as well. He does speech impediments better than just about any comedian. The surprises, however, are Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis. They hold up the American end of the comedy as well or better than their British counterparts manage the British side. Matter-of-fact, Kline took an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his work. He handles slapstick incredibly well when called upon to do so. He's pompous, crude, out of control, and generally the personification of an ugly American. For her part, the saucy Curtis wields her charm and sexiness like a lethal weapon. I also liked Maria Aitken in the smaller role of Archie's wife.

Bottom-Line: A Fish Called Wanda provides terrific laughs, for most viewers at least. There's a collection of delightfully eccentric characters, each making horses' arses out of themselves, one way or another. This is a film that easily bridges the Atlantic divide by lampooning both cultures mercilessly. Check it out. Chances are you'll be bustin' a gut.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age