A Fish Called Wanda

Now this is more like it! I remember seeing this film when I was younger, maybe around 13 or 14, and my parents and relatives laughing hysterically at it. I remember not laughing hysterically at it but rather being confused by it and not really getting what was so funny. Watching it again, some 13 years later, I laughed hysterically and then some. A Fish Called Wanda, from 1988, is perhaps the funniest and smartest comedy of the 1980s.

The film, directed by Charles Chrichton (Dance Hall, The Lavender Hill Mob), is certainly a farce in its purest forms. Chrichton couldn’t be better suited to direct A Fish Called Wanda, quite frankly, as his experience with English comedies (he was noted mostly for his Ealing Studios work) made him a top candidate for such a film. John Cleese wrote the script for the film, along with Chrichton, which would give A Fish Called Wanda tremendous wit and energetic fun.

Cleese also stars in the film, along with Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline (who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Otto), Michael Palin, and Tom Georgeson. The cast is, quite simply, brilliant. Everyone is downright hilarious and exhibits such expert comic timing that it becomes apparent that Chrichton was expecting the best from his performers out of the brilliant script.

The film is about a jewel heist and all of the circumstances and fallout that take place after the loot is procured. There are enough double and triple crosses in A Fish Called Wanda to make most other heist films look like amateur hour and enough goofy slapstick and dry English wit to make the film a veritable prototype for every comic film to be made after it. The charm of A Fish Called Wanda isn’t so much in its overt laughs as it is in the utter insanity of the situations and the performances that bring out the energy and timing in the plot. The characters are tremendously entertaining, of course, which draws the whole thing closer together.

This film is one of Cleese’s best overall works, as he brings about a comic mastery to his role that makes his portrayal of Archie believable and yet absurd at the same time. It doesn’t hurt matters that Jamie Lee Curtis spends a lot of time sporting AMAZING cleavage and that the sexuality in the film smolders in a truly unique and comic way, of course. Kline’s performance is probably the highlight, if one had to be selected, as his philosophy-quoting crook is so downright loony and funny that it’s hard to ignore the brilliance.

Bottom line after all of that rambling and gushing is that A Fish Called Wanda gets it all right in terms of what makes a comedy successful: it’s funny, it’s smart and it’s goofy. The film pushes all the right buttons and makes all the right moves, down to the doggie assassinations. It’s brilliant, high-and-low-brow comedy at its finest.

Trailer: