A Fish Called Wanda (Prominent Features, Star Partners Limited Partnership, MGM, 1988)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After showing The Asphalt Jungle as part of a marathon of heist movies that included double-crosses, on October 14 Turner Classic Movies then showed a film I’d heard about for years but had never actually seen: A Fish Called Wanda, which for some reason I’d assumed was directed by ex-Monty Pythoner Terry Gilliam. It wasn’t, but two of the Pythons, John Cleese and Michael Palin, were involved, and Cleese not only starred but co-wrote the script with veteran director Charles Crichton, who officially helmed the film (though imdb.com lists Cleese as an uncredited co-director as well). Crichton had been a contract director at Ealing Studios in the 1950’s, where among other films he’d made the screamingly funny heist-movie spoof The Lavender Hill Mob, and A Fish Called Wanda is a quite cunning blend of Ealing’s genteel looniness and the more blatant, in-your-face humor of Monty Python. It’s also a satire of the mutual inability of Americans and British people to understand each other; George Bernard Shaw famously described the U.S. and the U.K. as “two countries divided by a common language,” and A Fish Called Wanda is among other things a culture clash between Americans and Brits. The film opens with a major jewel robbery (the choice of jewels as the criminal target at first made A Fish Called Wanda an out-and-out spoof of The Asphalt Jungle) involving four principals: George Thomason (Tom Georgeson), chronic stutterer Ken Pile (Michael Palin), and an American couple, Otto West (Kevin Kline) and Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis, showing herself an able comedienne who could play more things than just a damsel in distress in horror films). They’re posing as brother and sister but they’re really lovers, and Otto is not only ferociously jealous but goes into a rage whenever anyone calls him “stupid.”

Otto and Wanda plan all along to double-cross George and take the loot for themselves, but George, anticipating this, stashes the loot in a safe-deposit box at an airport hotel so when Otto and Wanda show up to steal it, it’s already gone. As part of their plot Otto and Wanda also call the London police and turn George in, where he’s bound over for trial and represented by star barrister Archie Leach (John Cleese). This is an in-joke because “Archie Leach” was also the original name of Cary Grant, whom one could well imagine playing this part if this film had been made in the 1930’s or 1940’s. The central intrigue is Wanda Gershwitz’s determination to seduce Archie Leach, despite his insistence that under British law he isn’t allowed even to talk about the case to her as a possible witness. Archie is also married to Wendy (Maria Aitken) and the two have a daughter, Portia (played by Cynthia Caylor, real-life daughter of John Cleese), and there are some French farce-like scenes in which Archie’s and Wanda’s attempts to have sex are short-circuited by the appearance of Otto outside their window – and sometimes even in the same house – as well as Wendy’s and Portia’s unexpected return home following an aborted trip to the opera. Wanda needs to find two items: the key to the safe-deposit box where George stashed the loot, and its location. She hopes George divulged the location to Archie, which he didn’t, and can get him to reveal the secret stash to him in bed (assuming she ever gets that far with him). George hides the key first in a container of fish food – Ken is an animal lover who has an aquarium, and “Wanda” is also the name of his angelfish (hence the title) – then in a locket where Wanda stashes it, only she loses the locket, Archie finds it and then Archie’s wife Wendy grabs it and assumes it’s a present from Archie to her. “It’s the loveliest thing you’ve ever given me,” Wendy gushes over it predictably.

Another part of the plot deals with George’s continued attempts to kill Mrs. Coady (Patricia Hayes), the elderly woman with three dogs who’s the principal witness against him and the other criminals. His repeated attempts to off her merely kill one of the dogs – there’s a quite funny series of dog-funeral scenes in which mourners chant in Latin, “Canis mortuis est” (“the dog is dead”) – though when he drops a weight from a construction site on her and kills her third dog, she obligingly drops dead herself of a heart attack. There’s a confrontation scene between Ken and Otto in which Ken watches helplessly as Otto devours his precious fish, still very much alive, one by one until Ken agrees to divulge the location of the stash. Then the film ends at Heathrow Airport, where Wanda is planning to run off to Rio with the loot with one of her lovers – but which? Archie ends up being forced to stand in a bucket of waste oil and Otto, pursued by George driving a steamroller, ends up stuck in a pile of freshly laid cement as George’s steamroller bores down on him – though in the end he survives, but only long enough to grab onto the plane and watch from outside as Archie and Wanda make out inside. The film ends with a series of what imdb.com calls “Crazy Credits”: “Archie and Wanda were married in Rio, had seventeen children, and founded a leper colony. Ken [who’s cured of his stutter towards the end] became Master of Ceremonies at the London Sea World. Otto emigrated to South Africa and became Minister for Justice.” A Fish Called Wanda is a gloriously insouciant movie, cheekily irreverent but at the same time loving and human; even the farthest-out scenes, like the one in which Otto holds Archie by both legs, dangles him out of a window, and demands that Archie apologize to him for having called him “stupid,” are well done and add to, not subtract from, the film’s overall humor.