Hyper-reductive plot summary: Con men so good they even con themselves.
A Fish Called Wanda is:
- My favorite comedy of all time.
- My favorite heist movie of all time.
- My favorite romance of all time.
- At times, any or all of the above.
#4 is the correct answer. I think this is a near-perfect movie, and I think that the four main characters are perfect acting performances. This movie is so good that I was predisposed to like the infinitely worse Fierce Creatures just because of their involvement. It is so good that it lessened my love for Monty Python and Fawlty Towers in comparison, as this is easily the best thing that John Cleese has ever written and is the best movie with at least two of the Pythons involved (that would be an interesting list of its own… Brazil, Holy Grail, Baron Munchausen, Life of Brian… ?).
Let me start over. A Fish Called Wanda is a comedy about a couple of American con men named Wanda and Otto (Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline) involved in a jewel heist in England. They are playing off the other members of the gang and fully intend for the head guy George (Tom Georgeson) to take the rap while they abscond with the jewels. However, George has Ken (Michael Palin) secret the jewels away because he didn’t trust Otto. Then George is arrested. Wanda and Otto have no jewels, no idea of where they are, and have to figure out how to get this information out of a man sitting in a London jail.
So Wanda and Otto now spend the movie scrambling to get the goods. To achieve this, Wanda must manipulate the barrister Archie (John Cleese) who is involved in George’s trial by pretending to be an American law student studying the UK legal system. Unfortunately for Wanda, she doesn’t anticipate falling for Archie. She and Otto also must manipulate Ken, mostly by flustering him at every possible moment. Palin plays Ken as so tightly wound that he must be an irresistible mark for the Americans.
The reason that all of the double-crosses and shenanigans work is because of Jamie Lee Curtis. Her ability to charm every character (and the audience) is how the movie can pivot from mean-spirited to sweet to broad comedy without missing a beat. Without her incredible performance, the movie devolves into petty people shouting at each other. As a comparison, consider the heights that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia reaches thanks to its strong cast, and then compare that similarly venal and petty characters in a much worse show like Workaholics.
The other important part of her performance as Wanda, though, is that she isn’t without her flaws. She is uproariously susceptible to men talking dirty to her in Italian (…and French and Russian). She is the brains behind all of the schemes, but she sometimes fails to hide her intellect. And she always doesn’t seem to know exactly what or who she wants.
So let’s talk Otto, then. Kevin Kline, like Curtis, puts in an all-time great performance as Otto. He received the only Oscar win for the film (out of three noms, including Screenplay and Director). Otto is a short-tempered vulgarian who reads a lot of philosophy and is astute at being a man of action but lacks either the ability or the interest in thinking about the consequences of his actions. He just does things, and for the most party this strategy works for him. However, his flaw is known to Wanda, and she is able to use it to her advantage when she needs to distract, convince, or infuriate him. The speed at which the two of them have to consistently lie, improvise, and cover for each other’s lies is incredible.
A particularly hilarious part of this relationship is Otto’s other big flaw: he cannot stand the British. This loathing combines with petty jealousy so that before you know it, Archie is being dangled upside down out of a second-floor window overlooking the Thames, or being held at gunpoint so that Otto can apologize for hanging him out that same window. In another memorable scene, Ken has fries shoved up his nose as Otto mocks British cuisine.
I don’t want to get too much further into the plot, if I’ve even said anything that makes sense. There’s a subplot involving Ken (a Greenpeace/PETA activist guy) compromising his morals in the name of scaring an eyewitness, and Michael Palin sells his anguish and mounting injuries deftly (Note: in one of these scenes, Palin is disguised as a Jamaican cab driver in what was intended as comedy, but which reads as racist now). We laugh at his pain even as his pain seems genuine. There’s also a subplot about the courtship/con between Archie and Wanda that provides some of the best moments for Archie, Wanda, and Otto. The final set piece is most notable because the film came out in 1988, which might as well be a million years ago in terms of how airports handle security nowadays.
As I said in an aside earlier, the director Charles Crichton was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, but the movie itself wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. This is super weird to me, because this movie is well-directed, but there’s not really any razzle-dazzle in the direction. The movie hums because it is an insanely good screenplay by Cleese and has maybe the best ensemble of any comedy ever. I do not begrudge the nom for Crichton, but I wish I was more familiar with his filmography beyond Wanda and The Lavender Hill Mob.
The screenplay is a masterwork in the black humor of petty criminals. It feels at once of its time and timeless. One could easily picture Carey Grant as Archie or Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Wanda; I’d love to see Eddie Murphy do a high-strung turn as Ken. This could have been Billy Wilder’s follow-up to The Apartment or Nancy Meyers after It’s Complicated. The Coens could have nailed the pacing, Paul Feig could have found the perfect locations. Can you imagine the cast of What We Do in the Shadows doing this movie: I’d pay money to see Natascia Demetriou as Wanda, Kayvan Novak as Archie, Harvey Guillén as Ken, and Matt Berry as Otto.
Conversely, I’d watch Curtis, Cleese, Kline, and Palin in anything. I even sat through Fierce Creatures more times than I’d care to admit (ugh, that Rupert Murdoch impression). Thankfully, even if my fantasy casting and pleas to streaming services fall on deaf ears, I’ll always have A Fish Called Wanda.