She's No Fish
(originally posted on IMDb 12 November 2018)

"A Fish Called Wanda" is so funny that it has the dubious distinction of having killed a man from laughing too hard at it (seriously, look it up). Oddly, Monty Python alum John Cleese, who wrote the script and also stars, gave the more-exaggerated comedic parts to the two Americans (played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline), whilst he and the other English actors play the straight men--although fellow Python Michael Palin employs a stutter for his Ken and has a running gag involving his love for animals and witnessing them die. This is mainly a play on the English supposedly being stuffy and stereotypes of Americans as exuberant, gun-toting dimwits. The Americans both lack and desire culture and sophistication. Curtis's Wanda becomes sexually aroused from hearing foreign languages spoken, and Kline's Otto, too stupid to even know that he's stupid, misunderstands the philosophy that he reads. Meanwhile, Cleese's Archie Leach lacks the suaveness of his namesake Cary Grant but, nonetheless, is composed enough to form an eloquent apology when Otto dangles him upside down from an upper story window.

In another sense, the English are stooges to the American con artists. The Americans are actors playing actors, and Curtis and, especially, Kline in an Oscar-winning performance are terrific. It's something of a testament to Cleese's reported welcoming of collaboration that his character is the least hilarious of the four main parts. Contrary to Ken's fish also-named "Wanda," Curtis's Wanda is no fish, but rather a femme fatale, and the film gets a lot of gags from her and Otto posing as siblings while secretly being lovers, which is a doubled ruse by Wanda, as she plans to betray him over their loot from the heist. Meanwhile, the relationship comes across to others as strangely incestuous due to Otto's continued jealousy and seeming intimacy with his supposed sister. The scenes of him spying on her affairs with other men are especially humorous in how he abruptly and conspicuously appears.

My one complaint is that after test screening the re-shooting of some scenes over emphasized the romance between Archie and Wanda at the expense of her role as femme fatale. This also diminished the ironic wordplay of the title by, in effect, making Wanda a bit of a fish--another prize for the hero of a romantic movie. I prefer the original end shot on Wanda's shoes, which were designed to look like a shark--not a fish.