A Fish Called Wanda
The film is a comedy about a jewel heist and its aftermath.
Plot
George Thomason (Tom Georgeson) and his right-hand man, Ken Pile (Michael Palin), a beleaguered animal lover with a bad stutter, plan a jewel heist and bring in two Americans to help: an alluring con artist, Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis) and a "weapons man", Otto West (Kevin Kline). Wanda and Otto are lovers pretending to be siblings so that Wanda can work her charms on George and Ken.
Wanda and Otto plan to betray Ken and George after the heist, and vice-versa. Wanda, it later transpires, is also planning to betray Otto.
After the robbery, Wanda and Otto betray George to the police, intending to take all the loot for themselves, but discover that George and Ken have moved the loot to a new location.
Meanwhile, Ken is charged by George to silence a key witness, and Otto exerts his energies in fits of jealousy over Wanda and Archie and of impatience with Ken and Britain in general. Otto's interference, and other incidences of bad luck, lead Wanda and Archie's liaisons to go disastrously wrong.
There is subsequent confusion and slapstick.
For example, with Ken accidentally killing the witness' three Yorkshire Terriers one by one, instead of the witness. The witness eventually suffers a fatal heart attack when her third Terrier is killed by accident.
The title is derived from the name of Ken's favorite tropical fish, which Otto eats alive, to Ken's distress, during the farcical torture scene.
Archie and Wanda gradually fall in love and the movie ends with those two leaving the country with the jewels. Ken finally has his revenge on Otto by running him over with a roadroller (which he somehow survives).
Title cards reveal their futures: "Archie and Wanda were married in Rio, had seventeen children, and founded a leper colony. Otto emigrated to South Africa and became Minister for Justice."
Cast
John Cleese as Archie Leach
Jamie Lee Curtis as Wanda Gershwitz
Kevin Kline as Otto West
Michael Palin as Ken Pile
Maria Aitken as Wendy Leach
Tom Georgeson as Georges Thomason
Reception
The film was an enormous critical and commercial success.
Kline received wide acclaim and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work. Cleese and Crichton received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
In 2000, the readers of Total Film magazine voted A Fish Called Wanda the 37th greatest comedy film of all time. In 2004 the same magazine named it the 41st greatest British film of all time.
In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked the film 21st on its list of the 100 funniest movies ever made.