A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

With The Ice Storm and Grand Canyon, I found myself rediscovering a deep appreciation for Kevin Kline, and so it was only natural that I get around to watching a film which I should’ve seen long ago, the supposedly iconic comedy for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.

While I did laugh uproariously at times during A Fish Called Wanda, I really didn’t see anything especially distinctive about the film as a whole outside of Kline’s character, Otto, and his perpetual need to call British people out en masse for being stuffy, prim, and reserved. You know – all those clichés of Brits. Despite there being some truth to the clichés, there are plenty of British people, like Ray Winstone’s character from Nil By Mouth, who would’ve ripped a hole open in Otto’s throat for his obnoxious confrontations. But this is a screwball comedy written by John Cleese, and it is written that Otto bullies and harasses various uptight Brits for comedy’s sake and comedy is not forsaken in the creation of Kline’s colorful sociopath. Otto is hysterically funny, and can be whipped into knee-jerk rage by being called “stupid” as suddenly as Marty McFly can by being called “chicken.” Otto reads Frederic Nietzsche and fancies himself an intellectual. But just in case his wits cannot be summoned, he has a gun with his trusty silencer attached.

We have no doubt from his complete lack of impulse control that he is dangerous, but he is also a windbag, which makes for many volatile exchanges between him and whoever is unlucky enough to cross his path (1. because he is dangerous and 2. because he is oppressively obnoxious). He also has a streak of sadism, as exhibited when he forces Michael Palin’s character, Ken, to watch as he eats the bound Ken’s precious and beloved fish one by one out of Ken’s fish tank.

I’ve spent a whole paragraph describing the Kline character and nothing else, because really, that’s all that’s worth discussing. The rest of the film is formulaic diamond-heist triple/double cross, sexy lady (Jamie Lee Curtis) seduces stuffy British guy (John Cleese) for ulterior motives screwball comedy caper. The Kline character adds a much needed dose of sardonic humor which in turn overflows into the other characters a bit, such as when Ken, a sweet-natured animal lover (who stutters! Comedy!) is taunted by Otto that he will be unable to kill a witness, an old woman, who is testifying against the apprehended member of the quadruple diamond burglar team (the other three are Palin, Curtis, and Kline).

Ken, knowing Otto is right, but hating Otto for bullying him, is adamant in his refusal to lose the bet – he will kill this old lady. The old lady is portrayed as a broad comic caricature (she has three small dogs). The three small dogs are portrayed comically too. When Ken the animal lover goes to pet one, the sweet little thing almost takes his finger off. The old lady is presented as unsympathetically as her dogs. First Ken enlists a rabid Doberman (who bloodied Ken while he was muzzling the beast) to attack the old woman. He struggles with the dog in the back of a truck, comically urging it to “Kill! Kill!” and then opens the truck’s back doors and releases the Doberman, who proceeds to dart right past the old woman and snatches up one of her small dogs in its teeth. This is followed by a funeral service for the small dog. Then Ken attempts to run her over with a car, but can’t do it, and swerves before hitting her, while still managing to squash one of the two remaining small dogs. There is another funeral service. Finally he takes a sniper rifle to an upper floor of the building across the street from where the old woman lives. When she steps outside with her one remaining dog, he cannot bring himself to shoot her. But beside the entrance to her building is a construction scaffolding from which hangs a heavy block of cement. He fires a bullet into the rope connecting the block to the scaffolding but instead of landing on the old woman, it lands on her final pooch. Upon noticing resistance on the leash and finding it leading to underneath a heavy cement block, the old woman suffers a heart attack and drops dead.

Reviews of A Fish Called Wanda from back in 1988 will lead one to believe that it was some sort of revolution in comedy (Roger Ebert compares one scene to the Marx Brothers). What I think is that critics were so distracted by Kline’s buoyant antics that they failed to see the unremarkable film surrounding him; the other characters are merely sounding boards. In 2008, A Fish Called Wanda still holds up as an entertaining diversion, but remove Kevin Kline, and it’s all rather more insipid than the jubilation would indicate.

Grade: C+

Grand Canyon (1991)

Is it possible to be too likeable? If it is, then I’m going to say that Kevin Kline is disgustingly likeable, which is to say I think he is wonderful. Especially in Grand Canyon, a film which must be admired for not only its almost uniform likeability, but its ambition: it’s gonna cover the Big Issues! Existential Meditation – yeah, that’s the ticket!

It was scripted by Lawrence Kasdan, who also directed, and it’s clear, whether he wanted it to be or not, that he is a good-hearted individual, despite instances of gang-violence, urban decay, infidelity, and mid-life crises. The film’s sense of humor is what tips you off immediately – it’s warm, like its characters, who are mostly, well, very, extremely likeable. Danny Glover as Simon, during a blind date with Alfre Woodard fumbles and is unsure of himself, and the two are obviously mutually impressed, yet Glover’s awkwardness is delightful – he escorts her to his yellow car, “Well, there’s my car. It’s…yellow. (A beat) Of course it’s yellow, what am I saying?” Alfre Woodard finds it just as adorable as I did. It’s been a while since a scene has made me smile so hard.


Danny Glover plays Simon, a tow-truck driver who saves Kevin Kline’s character, Mack, when his car breaks down in a rather urban part of Los Angeles. Kline is in the process of being menaced and humiliated by five shameless black thugs who know an uptight whiteboy lost in the ghetto when they see one. This scene takes place within the first five minutes of the film and immediately hooked me, an uptight whiteboy, as I was scared shitless for Mack. Simon pulls up, like a guardian angel, and defuses the situation in a brilliant exchange with the head thug (the one who’s “strapped” as Simon’s nephew, Otis, would say). I would describe the scene further, but it is a wonder to discover for yourself, this brief dialogue between Simon and Ghetto Hood #1, that basically defines a whole subcultures’ ugly dilemma with a short, tense conversation.

The film is not so succinct, as a whole, however, and has many different subplots and auxiliary characters, none of which are bothersome, but add an unnecessary girth to the momentum of the story. I’m speaking of Mack and his wife, Claires' son, Roberto (a young Jeremy Sisto) whose role seems rather minor compared to the others. I grew impatient with his scenes at Summer Camp. He has a scene where he learns how to drive with his father that is compelling, but the scenes involving him consoling a bullied boy at the camp, and his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s parents introducing themselves to Claire all could’ve been removed without taking much from the film. Claire (Mary McDonnell) and her discovery of an abandoned infant wailing in the foliage when she’s out jogging struck me as particularly false. In a story like this, contrivances are requisite in order to establish the threadwork that ties all these disparate stories together, but this particular plot point was such a clumsy device – unsatisfied older woman facing Empty Nest Syndrome miraculously stumbles upon Hope wriggling in a bundle in the brush – that I often found Mary McDonnell’s entire character to be a weak spot. Sure, the film makes her say to Mack that it was “a miracle,” just like the curious moment when an absent-minded Mack was yanked back by a total stranger from stepping in front of a speeding bus. However, Mack’s character had an interesting story given to him, so anything involving him, I was much less inclined to grow tired with. The baby in the brush seems like a rather transparent script construct conceived (literally) to give an unassigned character something to do, much like Roberto and his Summer Camp romance, and to a lesser extent Mack’s secretary (and one-night stand), Dee (a 27-year-old Mary-Louise Parker) and her troubles. Though I must credit Kasdan for not forcing any melodrama involving Dee threatening to tell Mack’s wife, blah, blah, etc. Otis’s story also was not fundamental to the success of the film.

Like I said, though – the film is a success, and despite sometimes overstating themes about man’s smallness in the indifferent face of a natural behemoth like the Grand Canyon, there is a lot of wisdom about the way human beings struggle and persevere in the face of chaos and hardship. Mack, troubled why class and racial differences impose barriers between him and Simon becoming friends, seeks Simon out weeks later, after a bizarre and revelatory dream, and asks if he can buy him breakfast, one likeable all-around decent guy to another. Over breakfast, Simon tells Mack about his father’s worn, beat-up face:

Simon: When I used to look at that face, and see all the pain there, all the things he lost, all the hurt he had, I wondered why he wanted to go on, why he just didn’t lay down and give it up.

Mack: Did you figure it out?

Simon: No. Never figured out much about that guy. I asked him though.

Mack: What did he say?

Simon: Habit.

The strangest character in the film is Davis (played by Steve Martin), a rich movie producer and friend of Mack and Claire. In a funny scene, we see him viewing the fruits of his labors (well his money) when watching a satirically gruesome scene of trigger-happy killers screaming obscenities and shooting passengers on a bus they have hijacked. Davis smiles at the unfortunate mayhem, and when there’s no “money shot” he gets up, turns around, and yells at the director, “Where’s the brain matter?! Where’s the viscera?!” He is later shot in the thigh in an abrupt car-jacking and after getting out of the hospital, tells Claire and others that he has had an epiphany – no more movies with explosions, no more glorification of violence, no more ugliness. Of course, by the end of the film, when Mack commends him on his change of heart, Davis asks, “What? Oh that! Fuck that.” This is followed by one of the best scenes in the film - as Mack drives Davis around the back lot of Davis’s studio in an upscale golf-cart, Davis explains why movies about violence need to be made:

“The point is…there’s a gulf in this country, an ever-widening abyss, between the people who have stuff and the people who don’t have shit. It’s like this big hole has opened up in the ground, as big as the fucking Grand Canyon, and what’s come out of this big hole is an eruption of rage and the rage creates violence and the violence is real, Mack. Nothing’s gonna make it go away, until someone changes something, which is not going to happen. And you may not like it, even I may not like it, but I can’t pretend it isn’t there because that is a lie, and when art lies, it becomes worthless. So I gotta keep telling the truth…even if it means some motherfucker can blow a big hole in my leg…and I’m gonna walk with a fucking limp for the rest of my life and call myself lucky.”

The reason I like this scene so much is that it’s unclear how Kasdan wants us to feel about this speech. Should we think it’s a crock of deluded bullshit (which it certainly seems like)? Or is there some truth to what Davis is yammering about? After Davis says all that, he hobbles out of the golf-cart and asks Mack if he’s seen Sullivan’s Travels. When Mack says he hasn’t, Davis says, “It’s a story about a guy, he’s a filmmaker like me, who loses his way, and forgets what it was he was put on earth to do. Fortunately, he finds his way back. It can happen, Mack. Check it out.”

Grade: B