A FISH CALLED WANDA: Blu-ray re-issue (MGM/UA 1988) Arrow Academy

English farce has never surpassed its sheer ribald misdirection in the art of creating dark comedies since the halcyon days of the Ealing Studios (1940-1959). So perhaps it comes as no surprise 1988’s A Fish Called Wanda hails from this vintage primrose, given that its mantle of quality derives from director, Charles Crichton, responsible for a good many Ealing masterpieces (1951’s The Lavender Hill Mob, 1953’s The Titfield Thunderbolt and 1954’s The Love Lottery, among them) and John Cleese – an artful disciple of Ealing who, along with his Monty Python cohorts, extended the reign of Brit-born farce to a whole new generation, if, in a complete departure into the absurd. By 1988, Crichton’s name was hardly a household word. He had not made a movie since 1965.  Nor was Cleese’s reputation as either a multi-talented star or quintessence of that certain type of stiff-britches Brit, perpetually chagrined by his own smug superiority, entirely successful at crossing the Atlantic post-Python; despite the ever-growing cult status of his decidedly short-lived follow-up franchise: Fawlty Towers, in which he cast himself as the short-fused hotelier, Basil (1975 – 1979).  Aside: only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers were ever made: 6 in 1975; the remainder, four years later.
The bromantic chemistry between Cleese and Crichton had been brewing since 1969; Wanda’s incubation taking hold at approximately the same time. Cleese had desperately wanted to do ‘an Ealing-styled’ comedy and immediately began to fashion a part in it for himself with another going to fellow Python alumni, Michael Palin. For one reason, then another, the project could find no takers and was repeatedly postponed to the point where it looked as though it would all come to not. And yet, this is exactly what Cleese needed: time to hone and refine his acute sense of humor and smooth over the rougher edges on his concentrated action. The result: A Fish Called Wanda, a ludicrous yet purposeful crime caper/rom-com that moves like gangbusters, its 109 minutes feeling about half that, yet as densely packed with a select curio of Brit-born grotesques never to be sidelined by the exploitative pair of slick as pomade social outcasts from the colonies who vet and manipulate their cultured kissing cousins to suit their own means to a vicious and enterprising end. And what an end it becomes; an out and out outrageous festival of boobs, bitchery, bribes and bawdy on-liners; many of them simply cast off, only to find their way into our collective consciousness via osmosis. The red-hot poker of Cleese’s comedy genius strikes with ever-confidence: the lines, not so much as important as their potency laden with double entendre and venom, distinctly wrapped in the enigma of the well-timed and even naughtier ankle-biting barb.   
Wanda’s real gestation would stretch from June 1983 to 1988 as Crichton and Cleese ironed out every last wrinkle in this shar pei puppy of a shaggy dog crime caper. In retrospect, A Fish Called Wanda is such well-oiled machinery, infused with Crichton’s clear-eyed sense of creating a good show and Cleese’s constructionist brilliance it appears to effortlessly spring to life as a tailored studio-bound production. The pieces to Cleese’s screenplay fits so succinctly together that to imagine them independently, even now or in any other order, is to dismantle the delicate balancing act to the point where nothing works with any degree of competency. Take the ancillary character of Ken (Michael Palin); on the one hand, ruthlessly besought by a devious Otto, played by Kevin Kline, utterly superb as the misguided and dumb (notice, I didn’t call him stupid) philosophizing psychopath, faking a male-on-male attraction to deflect Ken’s suspicions about him and Wanda. Brother and sister indeed! Poor Ken: the naturalist, ordered by the brains of their operation, George Thomason (Tom Georgeson) to whack the prosecution’s star witness; Eileen Coady (Patricia Hayes), a puckered dowager with three Yorkies who, thanks to Ken’s ineptitude, instead wind up dead one at a time, only inadvertently to give the old girl her fatal heart attack. Ken - later, forced to endure Otto transforming his aquarium of rare and exotic fish into his own seafood smorgasbord. On the surface, Ken is a relatively minor character, perpetually delayed in taking a more proactive stance by a stifling stutter (Cleese, inspired by Palin’s father’s speech impediment). And yet, Cleese affords Ken prominence in two pivotal vignettes, capped off by a very sweet revenge: Otto’s steamroller demise at London’s Heathrow.
A gap of two weeks rehearsals likely afforded Cleese the opportunity to polish the comedy bits one recalls best from the movie today: Cleese’s own nude scene, as barrister, Archie Leach (Cary Grant’s real name) suggested by co-star, Jamie Lee Curtis, cast as the titular ‘fish’: Wanda Gershwitcz (asked to shed her wardrobe during their pivotal seduction and ‘discovery’ by the vacationing family renting the flat. Cleese would also follow Crichton’s lead to cap this hilarious vignette by covering up too late his unmentionables, not with a random book, but a silver-framed headshot of Mrs. Johnson (Pamela Miles), the lady of the maison. Personally, I have always been partial to the oblivious Otto’s chronic disregard for the traffic rules (being an American, he drives on the wrong side of the road) shouting indiscriminately “asshooooole” to those he misperceives as the offenders hurtling towards him. Throughout, Cleese and Crichton have populated their rather straight forward cat and mouse game with such a potpourri of great quality writing and so much over-sized finesse, A Fish Called Wanda cannot help but still seem bright and breezy nearly thirty years later. And it is saying a great deal the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPASS), rarely in tune with, or prone to honor a comedy, bestowed on Wanda a Best Supporting statuette for Kevin Kline’s pseudo-intellectual; in addition to nods to Crichton and Cleese – for direction and screenplay. Shakespearean trained, Kline’s wild-eyed hit man, spouting fractured Italian to drive our heroine periodically wild, crooning Volare as he drills her into the box spring during their one and only passionate session of…um…lovemaking, culminating in a cross-eyed orgasm, is undeniably the most flamboyant part in the picture; perfectly timed and designed for transatlantic appeal, if marginally overcompensating for the decidedly English reserve on display elsewhere.
Kline is actually the lone wolf of this piece, overshadowed and outclassed by the teaming of Cleese, Palin and Curtis; the trio forging their far more integrated and engaging on-screen chemistry. It is this kinetic energy that mostly satisfies in A Fish Called Wanda, if periodically pooped on by Otto’s chronic desperation to fit into their little clique. He never does. As example: even with fish-swallowing torture tactics applied, Palin’s animal-loving K-K-Ken would rather die devoted to Wanda and George, and, with a couple of ketchup-dipped French Fries stuffed up his nostrils/a whole pear jammed down his throat, than afford Otto the satisfaction of knowing he has beaten him. Palin’s is, in fact, the more potent and hilarious performance in the picture. He is dynamically funny, seemingly without even trying. On the flipside is Jamie Lee Curtis – the almost demonically driven spitfire, using sex like a flyswatter to get Archie to stick to her like the proverbial glue, destined to gum up his loveless marriage. Curtis is interesting casting to say the least; known then as the ‘scream queen’ of horror movies like Halloween (1978), Prom Queen and Terror Train (both in 1980). Her attempts prior to A Fish Called Wanda to break out of this mold – as a ‘serious’ actress – had not yet yielded any sort of career changer. And yet in Wanda Curtis is a hoot; loveably sadistic and enterprising to a fault as she feigns doe-eyed loyalty to all three men lusting after a piece of her action.
Between these diametrically opposed offerings we get John Cleese, as stoutly British as Kevin Kline’s ugliest of Americans. Initially overshadowed by the instant and out-of-the-gate bravura of his costars, it is Cleese’s stodgy barrister who brings up the rear during Wanda’s climactic race against time to learn the whereabouts of the hidden loot – the Cathcart Towers Hotel near London’s Heathrow airport. From the moment Cleese artfully sheds his clothes for the aforementioned failed seduction of Wanda, to his flubbed and thoroughly farcical defense of George at trial, where he inadvertently blows the cover off his many splendored ‘Wanda-lust’, to his penultimate escape from certain death at the point of Otto’s gun, Cleese’s befuddled booby acquires an admirable strength of his own convictions to carry on in that great tradition of the stiff upper-lipped gentleman forced to play by a different set of rules, yet proving he can slog it in the mud with the best of them and still come out on top to win the heart of this seemingly most heartless of all the ‘players’. And through it all, Cleese’s Archie remains the one man dripping with moral integrity he neither abandons nor trades up for a chance at the proverbial brass ring. He merely comes to his senses; recognizing his loveless marriage as such and making the executive decision to pursue something more satisfying with this tart who, by the end, only superficially holds ‘all the cards’.  Cleese’s Archie Leach is Wanda’s ‘nice guy’. Despite all the frenetic energy of his bungling cohorts, bumping into one another and the furniture like a bunch of juiced-up rabbits at the track, it’s Cleese’s slow and steady tortoise that wins this race.
Perhaps the most miraculous aspect of A Fish Called Wanda is the crudeness in its humor is almost always overshadowed by a lithe spirit of jest in the writing; the comedy, while razor-backed and nail-biting, never insufferable or sardonic. Take Otto’s chronic flirtations, taunting Ken with his supposed homo-erotic sexual interests in him. In any other comedy of the eighties, and a few made well beyond its lax tolerance towards homosexuals – treated mostly as limp-wristed figures of fun – lines like “I love to watch your ass walk away from me. Is that beautiful or what?” would play with sadistic disdain for gay culture. Yet, in Wanda they come off as devilishly clean, rather than ‘mean’-spirited. Possibly it’s Kline’s overt disregard for being offensive that tempers such lines with a more horrendous – and yet pleasing – if counter-intuitive aggressiveness. After all, any man who believes Aristotle was Belgium and the London Underground is a subversive political movement is quite obviously not playing with a full deck. Hence, such lines of dialogue come back on Kline’s misanthrope, instead of inflicting their tart-mouthed perversity to linger and besmirch the reputation of their target. Whatever the case, the comedy herein is deftly handled without malice.
A Fish Called Wanda opens in the London flat of Ken Pile, tending his aquarium full of exotic fish, including his favorite – an angel fish called Wanda. Ken is a recluse more in tune with animals than people, as is evident by the poster of a baby seal hanging on his wall. Enter Wanda Gershwitz and her ‘brother’ Otto – a disciple of Friedrich Nietzsche without actually understanding one word of Nietzsche’s philosophic debate. Kline’s pseudo-intellectual is brought in on a plotted diamond heist, orchestrated by Wanda’s gangster/boyfriend, George Thomason. This foursome knock off a jewelry store, making off with $20 million in diamonds. But almost immediately, the perfect plan goes awry. The fleeing foursome nearly run down Eileen Coady, a doddering dowager crossing the street with her three Yorkies. After Wanda and Otto betray George to the police, Coady also manages to pick him out of a lineup.  Wanda fakes concern to learn where George has hidden their loot, turning her sexual wiles on Archie Leach, the barrister assigned to defend George at trial. Recognizing this as a conflict of interest, Archie is nevertheless attracted to Wanda from the outset. And why not? His own wife, Wendy is a real cold fish; their daughter, Portia (Cynthia Caylor – nee, ‘Cleese’), a dull-as-paint princess, bored with her equestrian pursuits.
As Archie and Wendy separately prepare to retire for the evening, we cut to Otto and Wanda indulging in some kinky extracurricular exercises. Clearly, Otto is not Wanda’s brother! The next day an incarcerated George whispers to Ken an order to have Eileen Coady rubbed out before trial. Ken agrees and sets off to kill the dowager. Alas, his first attempt, releasing a foaming-at-the-mouth Rottweiler on the ole girl, instead results with the first of Coady’s beloved Yorkies being mauled to death. Ken, a devoted animal activist is tortured by his involvement in this innocent animal’s death. Relentlessly, he pursues another course of action. Disguised as a Rastafarian, Ken endeavors to run over Coady as she prepares to cross a quiet street in her neighborhood. Once again, he overshoots his target, flattening another of her dogs before escaping the impact from a crash into nearby trash cans. Ken’s final attempt at murder is as badly bungled; dropping a heavy block of cement from a nearby renovation project on the last of Coady’s pups, inadvertently causing the dowager to suffer a fatal heart attack.  Meanwhile, Wanda plots to seduce Archie and gain insight into George’s secret hiding place for the diamonds. Her first attempt is thwarted when Wendy’s car suffers a flat, forcing her and Portia to prematurely return home from a night at the opera. Otto, who has been shadowing her every movement, is forced to present himself as a fake CIA agent, supposedly keeping tabs on a high-ranking KGB official squirreled away in a safe house not far from the Leach’s country estate.  Discovering Wanda’s locket on the floor, Wendy mistakenly assumes it is a gift from her husband. Actually, Wanda has concealed the key to George’s safe deposit box inside it.
Wanda now demands Archie retrieve the locket on her behalf without Wendy’s knowledge. Alas, his feeble lies about the jewelry store mixing up ‘his’ order with another patron’s does little to persuade Wendy to return the locket to him, forcing Archie to stage a burglary while Wendy and Portia are out. Beforehand, Archie and Wanda had skulked off to a fashionable loft to satisfy their carnal lust. Unbeknownst to either, Otto followed them, instigating a confrontation that ends with Otto dangling Archie from a third story window until he apologized for calling him stupid. Now, Archie’s burglary backfires as Otto, ordered by Wanda to apologize for his earlier misbehavior, and driven to Archie’s home to make his recompense, instead perceives Archie – sheathed in a dark coat – to be a real burglar. Otto beats Archie unconscious before discovering his identity. Mercifully, Wendy arrives to discover her husband lying unconscious on the ground. Rushing to revive him with water, Archie awakens and swallows Wanda’s locket to conceal the real purpose behind his faked thievery. Next, he hurries to the loft where he and Wanda plan to finally consummate their affair. But again, fate intervenes; the Johnsons – the family renting the space, returning from their vacation just as Archie has stripped completely naked in their living room. Even worse, Mrs. Johnson recognizes him as the man who bought their house.  Chagrined, presumably for the very last time, Archie telephones Wanda to break off their failed flagrante delictos. Even so, he is revisited this same evening by Otto, desperate to apologize. Unaware Wendy is listening from their upstairs window Otto spills the particulars of Archie’s affair, the burglary, and furthermore, gives him carte blanche to ‘pork away’ with his ‘sister’.  
Having reported the ‘good’ news of Eileen Coady’s accidental death to George, Ken is instructed to get four plane tickets to Rio. Meanwhile, Wanda hurries off to George’s trial to act as a material witness, presumably in his defense. Left to finalize the details of their escape, Ken is confronted by Otto. Believing they are working for the same side, Ken cryptically reveals he knows the precise location of the diamonds while refusing to divulge it. Otto ties Ken up, demanding to know the whereabouts of the hidden jewels. As Ken staunchly refuses to tell him, he is forced to watch as Otto devours his tank-full of beloved exotic fish one by one. Taunting Ken further, Otto stuffs a ketchup-dipped French Fry into each of his nostrils; then, a pear into his mouth, momentarily causing Ken to hyperventilate. A tearful Ken gives up the location: the Cathcart Towers Hotel near the airport. Meanwhile, on the witness stand, Wanda incriminates George by implying he left their apartment on the morning of the heist with a sawed-off shotgun. Realizing the Judas in his midst has always been Wanda, George tries to attack her, resulting in utter chaos. As Wanda’s confession also reveals she and Archie have been unfaithful – if only in their hearts – Wendy confronts her husband, demanding a divorce.
From his holding cell, Archie implores George to get his sentence reduced with a confession. While George refuses to answer him, he does direct Archie to question Ken whom Archie discovers still bound and gagged inside his apartment. Archie coaxes Ken into divulging the location to him. Otto carjacks Wanda and drives them to Heathrow, determined to make the plane to Rio. Archie and Ken make chase to the Cathcart Towers. And although the diamonds are retrieved Wanda knocks Otto unconscious, making off with the loot. Archie arrives and is confronted by Otto, staggering to regain his composure. Otto forces Archie on the tarmac at gunpoint, quite unaware a portion of its landing strip is newly laid with still very much half-wet and sticky cement. As Otto’s feet become trapped, Ken appears atop a giant steamroller to avenge the death of his beloved fish by running over Otto. Archie boards the plane using Otto’s ticket. He greets the much surprised Wanda in Italian. As the couple discusses the future they fail to notice Otto, covered in cement, peering at them from the porthole. The plane takes off and Otto is thrown to the ground, shouting “asshooooooole”. In the series of epilogues to follow we learn Ken went on to work at SeaWorld while Wanda and Archie founded a leper colony with their many offspring.  
A Fish Called Wanda is ripe, silly, and unequivocally brilliant. For a ‘little movie’, co-funded by the financially beleaguered, if then newly amalgamated MGM/UA, it packs quite a wallop. The comedy is cynical without ever devolving into mean-spiritedness. Even Otto’s sadistic swallowing of Ken’s tropical pets leaves one with a bizarre jab of pleasure, and this, despite its dangerously real potential to lean towards garden variety gross out. I suspect the joy herein comes not from the fish-eating, but rather Kevin Kline’s expert ability to catapult the farce into outer stratospheres of the deliciously absurd.  Charles Crichton directs with evenly-paced hysteria; the vignettes magnificently lyrical in their cause and effect.  The movie clicks because its cast is telescopically focused on being ‘serious’, rather than scrambling to be funny.  The humor is dark but not particularly black and derives from Cleese’s acute powers of observation; seeing the transparent ridiculousness in life itself and tweaking it just enough to move us from daily follies into sublime examples of the audaciously perverse. The jewel heist may be modern cinema’s greatest MacGuffin – a point of interest only in so far as Cleese and Crichton can use it to hang their more ambitious skits, constantly raising the ante while maintaining the narrative equilibrium.  In the final analysis, A Fish Called Wanda is both a work of genius and a very sad epitaph to Cleese’s career as the un-intentionally funny every man. Neither he nor Michael Palin would do as much as the artful dodgers of situation comedy again…a real pity.   
A Fish Called Wanda’s Blu-ray’s debut in 2006 left much to be desired; particularly from MGM/UA, later to be absorbed and re-branded as MGM/Fox – the custodians of a lot of third-party acquired archives from Orion, United Artists, Avco/Embassy and other indies culled under one creative umbrella. MGM/Fox’s Blu-ray output, even their licensing of back catalog to third party distributors has been lackluster. But now in 2017 this tide seems to be shifting for the better, particularly as Brit-born Arrow Academy has been granted access to their archives. So, does this new to Blu re-issue of A Fish Called Wanda mean the old way of doing things is over? Hmmmm. We’ll see. What it does suggest, at least for fans of this movie, is Arrow may now hold the keys to the kingdom, applying their renown due diligence to this brand new 4K remaster with considerably improved video quality; albeit, in 1080p. Prepare to be thoroughly impressed. A Fish Called Wanda looks fabulous in this exclusively restored edition, culled from original 35mm camera negatives. Painstaking digital clean-up has yielded an image virtually free of age-related artifacts, with image stabilization applied. We tip our hats to Arrow and give sincere thanks for their efforts.  Colors are robust, if exhibiting a slightly dated characteristic, more and more to mimic the perfect reincarnation of vintage 80’s film stock. Saturation – bang on. Contrast – ditto. Love, LOVE this transfer – period!
We get two audio tracks: DTS 5.1 and LPCM mono, the latter recreating the original theatrical exhibition. It may ‘sound’ like sacrilege, but I prefer the mono here: less straining for reasons to envelope your surround channels – although, conversely the 5.1 does come with the added benefit of listening to John Du Prez’s underscore in true stereo. Arrow has been granted the rights to port over virtually all the extras from the old MGM/Fox Blu-ray, alas, with zero remastering applied. These extras are in 480i (yuck!) but include the comprehensive 1988 ‘making of’ documentary, nearly a half hour retrospective, produced for Wanda’s 15th anniversary, an ‘on location’ fluff piece hosted by Robert Powell, and ‘a message’ from Cleese. Arrow has also spiffed up its own extra content: a newly produced ‘appreciation’ by BFI archivist, Vic Pratt (clocking in at just under 20 min. and in 1080p) and an interview with production designer, Roger Murray-Leach (much too brief at 7 min. but also in 1080p). We also get nearly 30 min. of deleted scenes in 1080p hosted by Cleese, an image gallery and a theatrical trailer. Competing with Criterion here, Arrow has produced a handsome booklet with reflections and social critique by film critic, Sophie Monks Kaufman. While I completely disagree with Kaufman’s assessment of this movie, she writes it well and validates her position with class. Nicely done. Bottom line: A Fish Called Wanda from Arrow is a great stocking stuffer for the movie lover in your household. You want this disc. It’s that simple!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS

5+

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