Part of the beauty of John Cleese's masterful sitcom 'Fawlty Towers' was the complex, interweaving plot threads and slowly unfolding disasters. He obviously tried to replicate this in 'Wanda', but succeeded only in making the whole thing needlessly confusing and even rather boring. Jamie Lee Curtis can't do comedy - it's as simple as that. Kevin Kline, an ardent Python fan, offers one of the most abysmally overbaked and embarrassing performances I've ever seen, and Michael Palin is wasted in a one-note role as the bashful, animal-loving Ken, whose 'comedy' stutter is more irritating than amusing. Cleese himself turns in an oddly flat performance, especially compared to his hilariously manic turn in 'Clockwise' (the nearest we ever got to Basil Fawlty on film), his treasurable character parts in all the Python movies and his eccentric cameo as the mischievous billionaire in 'Rat Race'. The rest of the cast are largely wasted. Charles Crichton's direction is creaky and the film as a whole looks cheap, as if it was shot on leftover stock and bearing the same slightly seedy "shot on location in London, England" look as a lot of sixties 'swinging England' comedies. In short, it resembles a Michael Winner film, and that's not intended as a compliment. Cleese's screenplay blatantly attempts to play up stereotypes from both sides of the Atlantic, but it takes a good deal more skill and lightness of touch to hunt with the hounds and run with the fox simultaneously. Whatever certain over-excited critics tell you about this film heralding the revival of Ealingesque 'caper' comedies or the art of perfect timing is untrue. There were better and funnier films being made in England all through the eighties, but they didn't have one beady eye on the lucrative American market or a couple of unappealing Hollywood star turns in the cast. A Fish Called Wanda? A turkey named John...
Review of A Fish Called Wanda
