A Fish Called Wanda

Director: Charles Crichton

1988 / 108min / 35mm

Bringing the spirit of the Ealing comedy bounding into the 1980s, 78-year-old The Lavender Hill Mob director Crichton’s acerbic, side-splitting caper, its baroquely elaborate plot contorted into some kind of crazy shape by screenwriter/star/former Python John Cleese, boasts an ensemble for the ages: Cleese as a sick-of-it-all London barrister, Jamie Lee Curtis as femme fatale Wanda Gershwitz, who butters our barrister up, Kevin Kline in an Academy Award–winning turn as Wanda’s psychopathic “brother,” and Michael Palin as a stammering animal lover whose attempt to rub out a troublesome witness results in not less than three acts of canicide. A fleet farce that spins comic gold from cross-cultural misunderstandings, featuring some of the most boisterous, boorish Americans and timorous, tepid Britons in the history of cinema. Į燩/䙐஖Įl Palin as a stammering animal lover whose attempt to rub out a troublesome witness results in not less than three acts of canicide. A fleet farce that spins comic gold from cross-cultural misunderstandings, featuring some of the most boisterous, boorish Americans and timorous, tepid Britons in the history of cinema.

Distributor: Park Circus

Part of The Dog Dies