Saturday, September 21, 2024

"Don't call me stupid"


Some films make me laugh even after many previous viewings. This is about one of them (and it references another):
...A Fish Called Wanda is a movie with many, many things going for it. Kevin Kline, for one; he won his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Otto, the Nietzsche-reading, Aristotle-misunderstanding, gun-wielding, armpit-smelling Ugly American who eventually becomes the villain of this movie. John Cleese as the bumbling barrister Archie Leach is another. And Maria Aitken’s as the tough-as-nails English upper-class housewife Wendy Leach is another, particularly when she’s getting the better of both Cleese and Klein. ....

...[T]he film is also the final film directed by Charles Crichton, a legend of British cinema. Working for Ealing Studios in the 1950s, he made The Lavender Hill Mob, one of the loveliest heist/caper movies ever made. Cleese and Crichton, who had been wanting to make a film together since 1969, began writing the script together in 1983. ....

A Fish Called Wanda...is the kind of constantly-propulsive, laugh-a-minute mid-budget studio comedy no one makes anymore. This alone should be enough of a reason for you to revisit it, frankly, but if you need another, how about this: you will laugh. You will. ....

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