Stars: John Cleese, Michael Palin, Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis

Director: Charles Crichton

Summary: A strangely assorted group of jewel thieves pull off a heist in London's Hatton Garden. But only George, the brains of the operation, knows where the gems are hidden. Unfortunately, he's been sent to prison and needs the help of his defence counsel and so do other double-crossing members of the gang...

In A FISH CALLED WANDA, veteran director Charles Crichton and scriptwriter-star John Cleese create a dazzling quilt from various strands of English and American comedy. The plot, in which four disparate characters attempt a daring heist, comes from Ealing caper comedies, such as Crichton's own THE LAVENDER HILL MOB. Cleese and Michael Palin, as the hit man with a stutter and a love of animals, come from the anarchic tradition of Monty Python. The movie pays savage tribute to another Ealing comedy, THE LADYKILLERS, as Palin attempts to kill a witness to the gang's getaway. The glamorous con woman (Jamie Lee Curtis) is from Preston Sturges's great comedy THE LADY EVE, while Kevin Kline provides his own unique feverish comic intensity.
But, in the midst of this breathless comedy, something else happens. The barrister, Archie Leach (Cleese), who is defending one of the gang, is jolted out of his tight-laced British existence by Curtis's life force. And Curtis--like Barbara Stanwyck in THE LADY EVE--falls into her own trap: falling in love with the man she's conning. The 78-year-old Crichton never before had such rich material. He times everything in this brilliant comedy with the precision of a Swiss watch.

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A Fish Called Wandawas the blockbuster which proved that John Cleese could be a movie star in his own right. Directed by the Veteran Charles Crichton, who made the 1951 Ealing Comedies classic The Lavender Hill Mob, Wandacombined Ealing-comedy capers and Basil Fawlty-esque farce with contemporary big-screen swearing and black comedy. The plot develops in classic film noirstyle as Cleese's lawyer, Archie Leech, gets sucked into the double-crossing aftermath of a London diamond heist.

For sound box-office reasons, British comedies often sport an American star and here Cleese delivers not only Jamie Lee Curtis as a smooth operating femme fatale, but Kevin Kline as her idiotic, and insanely jealous lover (for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar). Pushing the limits of bad taste is Michael Palin's animal-loving Ken, who in the film's best running gag attempts to murder an old lady, only to slay her beloved pet dogs. Other highlights include Palin as a man with two chips up his nose and Cleese showing the world a different sort of "Full Monty". One of the funniest British films ever made, A Fish Called Wandawas followed by Fierce Creatures(1997), which reunited the lead cast and claimed to be an "equal" not a "sequel", but sadly wasn't. --Gary S Dalkin

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Something Fishy Documentary, John Cleeses First Farewell Performance Documentary, Deleted Scenes With Introductions By John Cleese, Original Featurette On Location With A Fish, Original Featurette A Message From John Cleese, Alternate Ending, Easter Eggs, Audi
Subtitles:	Croatian, Danish, English, Finnish, German, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	1988
Release Date:	February 10, 2003
Runtime:	103 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	16165 C D V D
Keywords:	Special, Comedy, Two, General, Edition, Called, Fish, Wanda, Discs
Genre:	Comedy