Viking Night: A Fish Called Wanda
By Bruce Hall
May 28, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
However, the situation brought to mind a sobering possibility - few First World problems are worse than exposing someone to something you love and not only finding them unimpressed, but discovering it hasn't aged as well as you'd anticipated, either. I've seen A Fish Called Wanda about a dozen times, but they were all during the 20th century. What if it wasn’t funny anymore and the hairstyles looked stupid? Would I succeed in indoctrinating a new fan, or would this go down like the disastrous Young Ones incident of 2003? My pop culture cred was on the line and as we watched, her stoic expression gave me pause. My God...what had I done?
So, you ask - did she like it, or not? And how have I enjoyed sleeping on the couch? All those questions and more will be answered in due time but first, a recap of the film.
A pair of London jewel thieves named George (George Thomason) and Ken (Michael Palin) are planning a jewel heist, and since a good heist requires an equally good crew, they decide to outsource the roles of “buxom tart" and “categorically insane sociopath" to a pair of Americans named Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Otto (Kevin Kline). The robbery goes off with a hitch, but the Yanks aren't in a sharing mood. Otto turns in George, but not before the latter manages to move the loot and hide the key. Once they discover this, the Americans visit him in prison, anxious to find out how much the police know. Not much, it turns out. George won't talk but there's a witness to the crime, and (To Otto’s amusement) Ken has marching orders to take her down. It does not go as planned.
Meanwhile, Wanda attempts to seduce George's lawyer to find out where the jewels are, and their relationship ultimately forms the core of the film.
Unfortunately, Archie Leach (John Cleese) is married - to his grueling law practice and a domineering wife. Throw in a shrill, entitled daughter and it's not hard to consider Jamie Lee Curtis your plan B. The problem is, finding the jewels is taking longer than expected and as George's trial draws near, tempers are starting to flare. (Deep breath) George knows he's been sold out but still trusts Wanda, who's secretly having an affair with Otto, who she plans to double cross after she's done swindling Archie, who doesn't realize the prosecution witness is being stalked by Ken, who holds the secret of the diamonds, and has such a crush on Wanda that he's named his favorite pet after her. Also, Archie's marriage is imploding and every time he tries to hook up with Wanda (the girl, not the fish), something hilariously improbable happens that prevents them from sealing the deal.
Got all that? Good. Now forget everything I just said because the story is actually the least innovative thing about this movie. My love of heist films is well documented but that's not what this is. A Fish Called Wanda is a romantic comedy and the title is not necessarily referring to the fish, nor are the stakes limited to a mere $20 million worth of jewels. The best part is that when Cleese and director Charles Crichton sat down to write this thing, it was apparently decided that the implausible nature of most rom-coms was not sufficient for this film, and that the words “over the top” were officially meaningless. Additionally, each actor would be required to provide a suicidal level of commitment to their character, each becoming a key component of the comic adhesive that holds all this insanely layered shtick together.
Curtis once made a career out of playing snarky sirens who are secretly the smartest person in the movie, and Wanda Gershwitz is no exception. Cleese excels at playing uptight, sentimental buffoons and this time, it really feels like he put his heart into it. Michael Palin has the unenviable task of playing the “straight" man here, with Ken's verbal tics and love of animals establishing him as the film's (rather tenuous) moral center. But the Oscar (literally) goes to Kevin Kline's completely demented portrayal of Otto - a jingoistic, pathologically violent sex maniac who loathes the British almost as much as he loves ninjas and hates people with disabilities. In the hands of someone like Gary Oldman, this would be a terrifying character, But Kline endows him with such comical excess of psychotic machismo that by the middle of the film, you’ll start laughing before he even does anything.
Everyone is having so much fun being in character and riffing off one another, you’ll probably forget the story details and end up absorbed with trying to guess how long it'll be until Otto sniffs his armpits again. This is, without a doubt, one of the funniest films of the last 30 years. To those of you who have yet to see it, I can confirm the legend as true. But of course, what YOU really want to know is...
Did the missus like it?
Well off course she did, because anyone who doesn’t like A Fish Called Wanda is obviously with the terrorists. In fact, the single criticism I can level is that while the movie is still very funny, the humor doesn’t feel as uniformly sharp as it did the last time I saw it. But this might be because I’ve seen it (now slightly more than) a dozen times, and because so many other comedies have since emulated this type of semi self conscious, improvisational mania. So, basically the only thing wrong with this film is that it positively influenced cinema in ways that still persist. This is why (freedom loving) people who’ve seen it love it - even if they don’t remember it - and people who haven’t seen it often pretend to remember it anyway. And now that I know my girlfriend likes it as much as I do, I feel a lot more comfortable turning my back on her.
My friends, that’s just the kind of bringing-people-together magic that makes guys like me love movies.