London-based gangster George Thomason plans a jewel heist with his right-hand man, Ken Pile, an animal lover with a stutter. They bring in two Americans: con artist Wanda Gershwitz and weapons expert Otto West, a volatile anglophobe. Wanda and Otto are lovers, but pretend to be siblings so Wanda can work her charms on Ken and George.
The heist succeeds and the gang escapes with a large sum in diamonds, which they hide. Wanda and Otto then betray George to the police and he is arrested. They return to collect the loot, with Wanda planning to double-cross Otto as well, but it is gone: suspecting duplicity, George had moved it to a safe deposit box and given Ken the key. Wanda sees Ken hide it in his fish tank, steals it, and conceals it in her locket.
To learn where the box is, Wanda decides to seduce George's barrister, Archie Leach. He is in a loveless marriage and quickly falls for her, but Otto's jealous interference causes their liaisons to go disastrously wrong. When Wanda accidentally leaves her locket at Archie's house his wife, Wendy, finds it and delightedly assumes it was a gift for her.
Wanda demands that Archie retrieve her keepsake, but Wendy will not give it up. He then fakes a robbery at his home as a cover for its disappearance. It too is interrupted and foiled by Otto.
Archie is later able to retrieve the locket,
and returns it to Wanda at their next tryst, this time unraveled by innocent intruders. Realizing he will be unable to give her all she seeks, he subsequently telephones her to call off their affair. Otto arrives at Archie's house seeking to apologise for his rudenesses, but Wendy overhears their conversation and learns of Archie's liaison.
George asks Ken to eliminate the Crown's only eyewitness to the robbery, the elderly Eileen Coady. Ken repeatedly tries, but each time accidentally kills one of her three small dogs instead, causing him great distress. Finally, the last's grisly death gives Mrs Coady a fatal heart attack. With no witness, George seems poised to be released. He gives instructions to Ken, revealing the location of the diamonds. When Otto learns that Ken knows this, he tortures him into revealing it by eating his various pet fish, leaving Ken's favourite, named Wanda, until last. Ken divulges that the diamonds are at the Cathcart Towers Hotel near Heathrow Airport, but does not know that Wanda has the key.
Even with Otto's knowledge and Wanda's key, the two still need George to remain in prison. Testifying as a defense witness at his trial, Wanda unexpectedly gives evidence incriminating him. Archie is stunned by her statements and flubs his questioning, inadvertently calling her "darling". Wendy, watching from the public gallery, declares their marriage dead.
Promising less prison time, Archie asks George about the diamonds and learns of Otto and Wanda's complicity and that Ken knows their location.
Archie sees Wanda fleeing the court and shunts her into his car. With his career and marriage ruined, Archie resolves to cut his losses, throw in with her, steal the loot, and flee to South America together.
They race to Ken's flat. While Archie interrogates him, Otto steals Archie's car, with Wanda in it. Archie painstakingly draws out from an uncontrollably stuttering Ken that the safe deposit box is at an airport hotel. They then set out for Heathrow on Ken's moped.
Otto and Wanda recover the diamonds, but Wanda double-crosses him and saps him unconscious in a Heathrow broom cupboard. She reluctantly boards her flight to Rio de Janeiro without Archie. Otto recovers, steals a boarding pass, and makes his way to the tarmac, where he is confronted by Archie. Otto is about to kill him, but is stalled while Ken approaches on a steamroller, seeking vengeance for his fish. Otto finds he has stepped in wet concrete and cannot move. Ken runs him over.
Archie joins Wanda aboard the plane. Improbably, Otto again appears seeking to derail things between them. Covered in encrusted cement, he clings outside their window until he is blown off during takeoff.
An epilogue relates that Archie and Wanda were married in Rio, had seventeen children, and founded a leper colony; Ken became Master of ceremonies at SeaWorld; and Otto became the Minister of Justice for South Africa.
Cleese and Crichton had attempted to make a film together in 1969.[6] Although the project never entered development, they promised each other that they would collaborate again.[7] In June 1983, the two began writing the script for Wanda, and, for the next two and half years, they met three times a month to work on the script.[7] According to Crichton, "We had a week of rehearsals and then a gap of two weeks in which to incorporate any new ideas which had been thrown up and to polish the script."[8] According to Michael Palin, the original title was "A Goldfish Called Wanda".[9]
Cleese told an interviewer that he called his character Archie Leach, actor Cary Grant's real name, because "I feel this film is as near as I'll ever get to being Cary Grant."[10]
Cleese, admitting in press interviews that he had no knowledge of how to direct a film, served as co-director, since the studio executives at MGM were worried about Crichton's age—he was 78 years old at the time.[6][7][11] On the set, Crichton wore a T-shirt presented to him by Cleese and inscribed "Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill".[11]
Cleese cast his real life daughter Cynthia as his screen daughter Portia in the film.
Filming began in England on July 13, 1987, and wrapped on September 21, 1987 after 70 days.[7]
Reception
Box office
The film premiered in New York City on July 7, 1988, and in Los Angeles on July 13, 1988, and was released theatrically on July 15, 1988, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Six weeks later, it reached number one at the box office there.[12]
It eventually grossed $62.5 million in the United States and Canada,[12] became the highest-grossing British film of all time with a gross of £12 million.[13] Outside of the US (including the UK), it grossed $126.1 million,[14] for a worldwide total of $188.6 million. It was the number one rental video in the US in 1989.[15]
In 2016, Empire magazine ranked A Fish Called Wanda 35th on their list of the 100 best British films, with their entry calling it "a must-own for any British comedy fan", adding, "it made possible Richard Curtis's later Brit-com oeuvre by establishing that British eccentricism can sell, revived the world's interest in Ealing comedies, and allowed a character with Cary Grant's real name – Cleese's bumbling lawyer Archie Leach – to live again on the big screen."[23]
The film is number 27 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".[24] It is also included in the Reader's Digest "100 Funniest Films" list.[25]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval rating, based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10.[as of?] The site's critical consensus reads, "Smartly written, smoothly directed, and solidly cast, A Fish Called Wanda offers a classic example of a brainy comedy with widespread appeal."[30]
On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 80 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[31][as of?]
According to CriticsTop10, "A Fish Called Wanda" appeared on over 60 critics' top ten lists, making it the fifth most acclaimed film of 1988.[32]
Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale as of July 2020.[33]
During the initial run of the film, a Danish audiologist named Ole Bentzen died while laughing during a screening, which led newspapers to report that he had died from laughter.[39][40][41] The official cause of death was heart fibrillation, which may have been caused by an increased heart rate due to extended laughter.[42] Cleese considered using the event for publicity, but ultimately decided that doing so would be in bad taste.[40]
Sequels and adaptations
The principal cast reunited in 1997 for Fierce Creatures (dubbed an "equal" rather than a sequel or prequel, by Kline), playing different roles. Fierce Creatures was not as well received by critics or audiences as A Fish Called Wanda.[43]
The novelization of Fierce Creatures, written by Iain Johnstone, who co-wrote the film, begins with a letter from Archie (John Cleese's character in the first film) to his brother Rollo. According to the letter:
Archie and Wanda are still living happily in Rio, and Wanda enjoys having a new child (or multiple children) each year;
Otto visited them once, having left South Africa after Nelson Mandela's election and the end of the apartheid regime; he is looking for like-minded individuals to form a similar group of National Socialists, and Archie and Wanda are both heartily glad when he is gone;
Ken is still master of ceremonies at the London Sea World; before visiting Rio, Otto "looked him up" as if they were old friends, but did not even get close before Ken had security guards throw Otto out of the park.
In 2008, it was reported that John Cleese and his daughter, Cynthia (who played his screen daughter, Portia), had started to work on a stage musical version of the film.[44]
^Bjørnkjær, Kristen (April 10, 2013). "Manden, der døde af grin" [The man who died from laughter]. Dagbladet Information (in Danish). Videnskaben anerkender ikke, at man kan dø af grin, men i praksis dør man nogle gange under et latteranfald. Pulsen kan ryge drastisk i vejret. Den officielle dødsårsag for Ole Bentzen var hjerteflimmer.
