A Fish Called Wanda (1988), directed by Charles Crichton. Streaming at home, Wednesday, May 10.

We were sitting around looking for something to watch, something fun, and I remembered A Fish Called Wanda, a movie I think I saw twice back in Mt. Pleasant in the summer of 1988. I hadn’t yet moved to East Lansing to go to Michigan State University, and so was still stuck in my hometown, digging all of the movies that played there. This one screened at the Cinema Four. There were some particularly stupid films released that summer, among them Rambo III and Crocodile Dundee II and Poltergeist III and Short Circuit 2, not to mention Cocktail, to go along with stuff like Big and Bull Durham, which were surprises, though I doubt they hold up well. Then, in July, seemingly out of nowhere, came A Fish Called Wanda. It was a big hit.

It was also a fucking relief. I was one of those many kids in the late 70s and early 80s who just devoured Monty Python–the show, which played on our local PBS station, their bizarre records, the movies we watched again and again on this newfangled VHS machine, especially The Holy Grail. They were profoundly crass and yet brilliant in ways that made it seem like there were rewards for being at least somewhat smart. The assholes in high school could like their sports and their slasher movies and their hair metal and their stupid-ass Rambos and Cocktails, but we could love Monty Python.

But Python, the group, was long disbanded by then, and the non-Python stuff, with the exception of Terry Gilliam’s work (at the time–holy shit did he come crashing down) was utter garbage. Until A Fish Called Wanda. John Cleese wrote it! He stars in it! Then I read in my Sunday New York Times that it was directed by a Charles Crichton, who made a few “Ealing Comedies”, supposedly wonderful, dry comedies from England years and years ago. I went twice, and I loved it.

Now, I wouldn’t see those Ealing movies for years, but they’re sure better than Wanda. Wanda isn’t terrible or even bad, it’s just ugly and not very funny until… well, until the non-Python flexes his muscles, and that’s Kevin Fucking Kline.

Kevin Kline? Well, I wondered, on this viewing while laughing my ass off at his many antics, why I hadn’t seen many of his movies? Gosh, I should check them out. What a surprise–I mean, the guy has done almost nothing interesting in his film career. Some stuff that got good reviews and even Oscar nominations (like Sophie’s Choice, an utterly mediocre film that looks like it’s a made-for-TV movie), but the type of stuff no moviegoer would see today. Or stuff that is just bad. Not even Wanda would really work, except that Kline is nuts, just absolutely nuts.

Janice and I were laughing a lot during this film, usually only at Kevin Kline, and we both came to the conclusion that his character was probably only sketched out, and they just let him go berserk. I mean, his character is at once brilliant and an idiot, a wonderful send-up of Americans, and Kline seems to just be having tremendous fun going haywire in every scene. He’s a total kook, and we loved him.

Cleese is fine as a stuck-up Brit and Michael Palin is fine as a stuttering sidekick who loves animals and Jamie Lee Curtis is fine playing Jamie Lee Curtis in comedies, which means she also has to undress or nearly undress, which actually makes me feel bad. The plot is rudimentary and the jokes are fairly tame and the lighting is atrocious, as is the music.

Is it worth watching? I mean, I guess? Not if you love Monty Python and are hoping for more of that, but if you need a light comedy and have seen every Ealing comedy–Lavender Hill Mob, Ladykillers, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Passport to Pimlico, The Maggie, Whiskey Galore… on second thought, just see those and you’re good. Then watch highlights of Kevin Kline on YouTube and you’ll be fine, too.