For Your Binge Consideration: 'A Fish Called Wanda' (1988)

Comedy can be a very divisive thing; unlike most genres, where you might be able to adjust your views or temper your expectations towards aspects of it, the crux of whether or not a comedy works for you is whether you find it funny or not. That in itself is simple; judging why you find something funny, on the other hand, is incredibly hard to determine. Well in lieu of that, to quote My Little Pony 'laughs don't come in barrels' but as a 'body's response to delight'. Under this criteria I have to say that A Fish Called Wanda takes the cake. Well firstly because it literally killed someone with laughter in its initial run, but also because it's very rare to come across anyone who actively dislikes the film or doesn't at least find it amusing. For me it is one of the great comedies, and why? It can be hard to explain why. The plot is simple: two brash American crooks (Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline) team up with a London gangster (Tom Georgeson) and his mild-mannered, stuttering right-hand man (Michael Palin) to steal some jewels. Double-crosses ensue into which a prim and proper barrister (John Cleese) comes into play as a key figure. 

Charles Crichton came out of more than two decades of retirement to direct this long-gestating screenplay written by Cleese and himself. Some might say it is a heist comedy, but in the end that element is really just a minor element of the film - fittingly to a film that stars Monty Python alumni Cleese and Palin, it is rather scattershot, which sometimes implies criticism, but much like their Monty Python films it only serves as another great aspect of the film. In that a lot of things are just so random, in terms of the types of jokes and comedy the film flings at you, and yet somehow it works in terms of being a cohesive film. And more importantly - it is hilarious. 

At the centre of the film is perhaps the more conventional 'romance', of sorts, between Curtis' titular Wanda Gershwitz and Cleese's Archie Leach (named after Cary Grant's real name) - though with always a certain someone I'll get to in a bit lurking in the wings. It's the classic sort of 'trickster romances unsuspecting conventional gent' storyline that you used to get so much back in Grant's heyday, and it's well acted, well performed, and entertaining in the hands of the two actors, and in particular Curtis shines who since Trading Places had proved to have comic chops that would extend to this, True Lies and beyond. On their own they'd make a fine comic duo and a more than decent crime caper turned romcom, but the true stars of the film are the gentlemen in the wings who when combined with the two leads, make this the great film it is. 

Kevin Kline's Otto West won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, which is often a rarity not just for a comedic performance, but a comedic performance that's as outlandish, insane and over-the-top as this. Kline's Otto is proudly American, and 'cultivates' himself on a diet of pseudo Italian and philosophy. His aggressive Anglophobia aside he can be pleasant enough, but just don't call him stupid. Kline's performance is one of broad strokes, with ridiculous wide-eyed facial expressions, non-stop cussing, brash shouting, and it's easy for this kind of performance to become grating but Kline soars in the role. 

It's a magnificent turn and amplified all the more by the dynamic he shares with the rest of the cast, where with Cleese and Curtis he plays off their more sensible indignation so well, and best of all with the underrated Maria Aitken as Archie's wife in one of the funniest scenes of many funny scenes in the film, which knows so well not to let characters try to one-up one another but instead let everyone get their change to shine in every individual scene

And of course there's Palin's Ken Pile. Ken is by far the most sympathetic character in the film, despite being a gangster himself too, and subsequently has the most awful things happen to him. Palin's creation of this stuttering, meek fellow is brilliant in that he's so endearing while also hilarious as he gets into one bad situation after another all through the fault of others, with the highlights being the sequence where the animal-loving Ken accidentally murders several dogs while trying to get to his intended target, and another where his beloved fish gets eaten by Otto - and yes, that's the scene which killed a man. 

Otto and Ken are a comic duo (though not a harmonious one) for the ages - and you know it's a hilarious film when I don't think that scene is even in my top 5 funniest scenes of the film - it's just that good.