Biography

Early life and education

Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, the only child of Reginald Francis Cleese, an

insurance salesman, and his wife Muriel Evelyn (née Cross). His family's surname was originally Cheese, but

his father had thought it was embarrassing and changed it when he enlisted in the Army during World War I.

- He could not go straight to Cambridge University as the ending of conscription in the United Kingdom meant there were twice the usual number of applicants for places, so he returned to his prep school for two yearsto teach science, English, geography, history and Latin (he drew on his Latin teaching experience later for a scene in Life of Brian, in which he corrects Brian's badly written Latin graffiti). He then took up a place he had won at Downing College, Cambridge to read Law. He also joined the Cambridge Footlights. He recalled that he went to the Cambridge Guildhall, where each university society had a stall, and went up to the Footlights stall where he was asked if he could sing or dance. He replied "no" as he was not allowed to sing at his school because he was so bad, and if there was anything worse than his singing it was his dancing. He was then asked "Well, what do you do?", to which he replied, "I make people laugh".

- After St. Peter's, Cleese went to Clifton College. There he learned that being funny could be a good way to make friends. At home, Cleese watched television with his parents who sometimes tuned in to such American comics as Jack Benny, George Burns, and Phil Silvers. He also became a devoted fan of The Goon Show, a radio program that featured the likes of Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers.

- Cleese displayed his comedic talents as a member of the famed Footlights Dramatic Club, which previously had featured the likes of Peter Cook and David Frost. With the Footlights, he performed at the Beyond the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1962. He befriended Graham Chapman, a fellow member of the troupe, and the two would later become collaborators.

Monty Python's Flying Circus'

After he earned his degree in 1963, Cleese decided to follow his interest in comedy. He had been in a

Footlights show called Cambridge Circus (first known as A Clump of Plinths) that year at the university, which

later went to London. "I had a choice between earning 12 a week working as an article clerk in a law firm or 30

a week in the theater. I thought, 'This sounds a bit more interesting,'" he told Back Stage West. Cleese even

traveled with the show when it ran on Broadway for several weeks in October 1964.

Cleese soon anded a job writing jokes for BBC Radio. He later made the move to television, becoming a writer

and performer on The Frost Reportfeaturing David Frost. Other members of the writing staff included Graham

Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones. Based on weekly themes, each episode of the program

would feature musical satire and sketch comedy. He also starred in At Last the 1948 Show with Chapman, Tim

Brooke-Taylor, and Marty Feldman in 1967.

Cleese started working on a new television venture with Chapman, Idle, Palin, Jones, and Terry Gilliam.

Together they developed Monty Python's Flying Circus, an outlandish comedy series featuring off-the-wall

sketches and odd animation segments. At first, the BBC and the public did not know what to make of this

unusual show when it debuted in October 1969. Monty Pythonavoided standard punchlines in their skits, which

threw off audiences at the time.

At 6-feet 5-inches tall, Cleese towered over most of the cast. He often played authority figures and showed a

talent for hurling insults. Cleese, with his crisp speaking style, took on a number of memorable roles, including

the stuffy representative of the Ministry of Silly Walks or the consumer who buys a dead parrot. "John's

performances were the linchpin of Python," Michael Palin toldPeople

Acclaimed Comedian

In 1972, Cleese branched out in a new direction. He helped found Video Arts Ltd, a company that produces

humorous training videos for corporations. Putting his writing and acting talents to the test, Cleese created and

appeared in programs on customer service, organization, and meetings among other topics. The company's

videos have been used by such companies as General Motors and Saks Fifth Avenue.

During the show's third season, Cleese started to lose interest. The group often worked in teams to write the

sketches, with Cleese frequently pairing up with Chapman. Chapman suffered from a drinking problem at the

time. "I felt we were repeating ourselves. And also I was writing with the alcoholic, and no one else wanted

to," he explained to Entertainment Weekly. He left Monty Python's Flying Circus before its fourth season.

Working with his wife, Connie Booth, Cleese created a new television series,Fawlty Towers. The popular

sitcom first aired in 1975 and featured Cleese as the high-strung Basil Fawlty who runs an inn with his wife

(Prunella Scales). His real-life wife played a hotel waitress named Polly on the show. His marriage to Booth

ended in 1978, but the two continued to work together onFawlty Towers until 1979.

While he had been tired of the Monty Python television series, Cleese did participate in the group's film

projects. He appeared in, and helped write,Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Monty Python's Life of

Brian (1979), and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983). The films won high praise and delighted the

group's ever-growing legions of fans. They are now considered some of the best comedies ever made.

Cleese had another career breakthrough in 1988 with A Fish Called Wanda. For this comedy, he starred as an

English barrister who gets mixed up with criminals (Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline) who are after some

stolen jewels. Michael Palin also had a supporting role in the film, which Cleese co-wrote with Charles

Crichton. The comedy raked in more than $200 million at the box office and earned Cleese and Crichton an

Academy Award nomination for their script.

The following year, Cleese reunited with his fellow Python colleagues to say good-bye to one of their own.

Graham Chapman died of cancer in a London hospital on October 4, 1989, with Cleese; Palin; Chapman's

partner David Sherlock; and some of Chapman's family by his side. That December, Cleese and several other

members of Python spoke at Chapman's memorial service.

In 1997, Cleese tried to recreate the success of A Fish Called Wanda inFierce Creatures by reuniting the cast

for a new comedy. Unfortunately, the film received harsh reviews and performed poorly at the box office.

Cleese had better luck with other franchises, signing on in the James Bond film series as an assistant gadget

expert in The World Is Not Enough (1999). In 2002'sDie Another Day, he returned as Q, the chief gadget

expert. He also appeared in the first two Harry Potter films as a ghost named Nearly Headless Nick.

Cleese has also enjoyed some success on American television. He won an Emmy Award in 1987 for a guest

appearance on the sitcom Cheers. More recently, Cleese had a recurring role on the hit comedy Will &

Grace from 2003 to 2004.

His distinctive English accent has been put to good use on several animated projects as well. In Shrek

2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), and Shrek Ever After (2010), Cleese voiced King Harold.

Personal Life

Married three times, Cleese went through a bitter divorce in 2009. His third wife, American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger, won a roughly $20 million settlement from Cleese. He soon announced that he would go on tour to raise money to pay the alimony to his ex-wife. Cleese has two daughters, Cynthia and Camilla. Cynthia is from his marriage to Connie Booth, and Camilla is from his second marriage to Barbara Trentham.

In Recent Years

An author of several books, Cleese contributed to 2005's The Pythons: Autobiography. He also reunited with the surviving members of Monty Python for several events in 2009 to celebrate the group's fortieth anniversary. These days, Cleese works on a variety of other projects. He continues to tour and recently made a guest appearance on the comedy series Entourage

- Said he was to be the first person to say the F-word at a memorial service when he spoke at Graham Chapman's.

- When (third wife) Alyce Faye Eichelberger had her hip replacement I realised that there was a chance for a little humour and I sent a bunch of flowers to her lawyer's office saying, 'Would you please inspect these flowers and see whether they are acceptable and would you please vet the greetings card that comes with these and see whether that is also legitimate. And if you are satisfied that both of them are not harmful, would you be good enough to send them on to my wife as soon as possible?'Ideas of humourJohn Cleese was born on October 27, 1939, in Weston-Super-Mare, England, to Muriel Evelyn (Cross) and Reginald Francis Cleese. He was born into a family of modest means, his father being an insurance salesman; but he was nonetheless sent off to private schools to obtain a good education. Here he was often tormented for his height, having reached a height of six feet by the age of twelve, and eventually discovered that being humorous could deflect aggressive behavior in others. He loved humor in and of itself, collected jokes, and, like many young Britons who would grow up to be comedians, was devoted to the radio comedy show, "The Goon Show," starring the legendary Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Harry Secombe.Cleese did well in both sports and academics, but his real love was comedy. He attended Cambridge to read (study) Law, but devoted a great deal of time to the university's legendary Footlights group, writing and performing in comedy reviews, often in collaboration with future fellow Python Graham Chapman. Several of these comedy reviews met with great success, including one in particular which toured under the name "Cambridge Circus." When Cleese graduated, he went on to write for the BBC, then rejoined Cambridge Circus in 1964, which toured New Zealand and America. He remained in America after leaving Cambridge Circus, performing and doing a little journalism, and here met Terry Gilliam, another future Python.

A Fish Called Wanda is a 1988 heist-comedy film written by John Cleese andCharles Crichton. It was directed

by Crichton and stars Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin. Kline won the Academy

Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Otto. Cleese and Palin won BAFTA Awards for Best

Lead and Best Supporting for their acting.[2]

The plot involves members of the crew of a successful diamond heist as they manipulate and double-cross one-

another in an effort to find the diamonds, which have been hidden by the gang's leader just before he was

arrested, having been set-up by one of his subordinates. His barrister, played by Cleese, becomes a central

figure in the crew's schemes as femme fataleWanda (Curtis) uses him to locate the loot.

Plot[edit]

London-based gangster George Thomason and his right-hand man, Ken Pile, an animal lover with a bad

stutter, plan a jewel heist. They bring in two Americans to help: con artist Wanda Gershwitz and "weapons

man" Otto West, a loud-mouthed Anglophobe who fancies himself an intellectual and hates being (correctly)

called stupid. Wanda and Otto are lovers, but they hide this from George and Ken, pretending to be brother and

sister, so Wanda can work her charms on them. The robbery goes well, and the thieves get away with a large

sum in diamonds. However, they are briefly spotted during their getaway by Mrs. Coady, an elderly lady

walking her three dogs. The group then hide the loot in a safe in an old workshop. Soon after, Wanda and Otto

betray George to the police and he is arrested. They return to collect the loot, with Wanda planning to double-

cross Otto as well, only to find that George has moved it. Wanda decides to seduce George's barrister, Archie

Leach, so that he can persuade George to plead guilty and give up the location of the diamonds. Unhappily

married, Leach is brow-beaten by his vindictive wife, Wendy, and spoiled daughter, Portia, and he quickly

comes under the spell of Wanda's charms.

Otto is insanely jealous, and his interference, combined with instances of bad luck, causes Wanda and Archie's

attempted liaisons at his friend's flat to go disastrously wrong. Wanda reveals that she likes Archie but would

stay only with a rich man. Archie eventually calls off their attempted affair when a family walk into the flat,

having agreed a new tenancy without his knowledge. Meanwhile, George gives Ken the task of killing Mrs.

Coady, the Crown's only eyewitness. During his various attempts to murder her, Ken accidentally kills off her

three Yorkshire Terriers one by one. This causes him great grief, as well as suffering bodily harm as each

attempt goes wrong. When he kills the last of her dogs, Mrs. Coady suffers a fatal heart attack, and finally Ken

is successful in his mission. Wanda and Otto want George to remain in jail; but, with no witness, he now seems

set to get off. At his trial, defence witness Wanda gives evidence that will lead to a conviction rather than an

acquittal. Archie, stunned by her unexpected testimony, flubs his cross-examination and inadvertently calls her

"darling." Enraged, George starts a brawl that leads to everyone fleeing the courtroom. Archie is confronted by

Wendy, who is now convinced he has had an (unconsummated) affair and decides to divorce him.

With his career and his marriage in ruins, Archie resolves to cut his losses, steal the loot himself, and flee

to South America. Promised less jail time, George tells Archie that Ken knows where the diamonds are. Archie

sees Wanda fleeing the courthouse, pulls her into his car, and races to Ken's apartment. They review what has

happened, and he asks why he should take her to South America with him. She counters that she has the key to

the safe deposit box where the loot has been moved. While the court drama is unfolding, Otto has been trying

to get Ken to reveal the location of the diamonds. He torments Ken by eating the fish in his aquarium one by

one, leaving the fish called Wanda until the end. Ken gives away the location of the diamonds, at a hotel

near Heathrow Airport. Otto is leaving just as Archie runs into the building. Otto steals Archie's car, taking

Wanda with him. Ken tells Archie, as quickly as he can – given his stutter – where they are going, and the two

give chase. The protagonists all end up at Heathrow. Otto and Wanda recover the diamonds, but Wanda

quickly double-crosses Otto and leaves him unconscious in a locked cupboard.

Otto shoots his way out of the cupboard and is briefly captured by Archie, only to turn the tables. As Otto is

about to kill his love-rival, Archie manages to stall by taunting Otto about his nation's failures, such as

the Vietnam War. Before Otto can shoot, he is distracted by the arrival of Ken driving a steamroller, seeking

vengeance for the demise of his fish. Otto accidentally stands in wet cement (which has partially dried) and is

soon run over after he runs out of bullets. Archie joins Wanda on board the plane, which taxis for takeoff.

Through the plane window, Otto, who has survived the steamroller attack, curses them until he is blown off as

the plane takes off.

A closing text explains what happens to the gang members after the events of the movie. Archie and Wanda

move to Rio de Janeiro, have 17 children, and start a leper colony. Ken, his stutter lost, becomes the Master of

Ceremonies at London'sSea World. The immoral Otto moves to South Africa and becomes Minister of

Justice (at the time of filming, South Africa was still ruled under apartheid).

Reception[edit]

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.[3][4] Cleese and Crichton received an Academy Award

nomination for Best Original Screenplay.[3] Crichton was also nominated for Best Director,[3] Cleese won a

BAFTA for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Curtis received nominations for Leading Actress at the Golden

Globes[5][6] and BAFTA awards.[7] Michael Palin won aBAFTA for Best Supporting Role[8] and Maria

Aitken received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress[9]

In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked the film 21st on AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs, its list of the 100

funniest movies ever made.[10] The film is number 27 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".[11] It is also included

in the Reader's Digest "100 Funniest Films" list.[12] As of November 2013, the movie holds a 93% rating

on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus reading: "Smartly written, smoothly directed, and solidly cast, A Fish

Called Wanda offers a classic example of a brainy comedy with widespread appeal."[13]

Sequels and adaptations[edit]

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 as was A Fish Called

Wanda.[14]

The novelization of Fierce Creatures, written by Iain Johnstone, who co-wrote the film, begins with a letter

from Archie to his brother Rollo (John Cleese's character in the film). 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 didn't 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.[15]

mor can be hard to pin down. It’s easy enough to say that 1988’sA Fish Called Wanda has great comedic

timing, or great performances, or great writing. It’s even easier to give it the common, empty, subjective praise

so many comedies get: “It’s really funny.” But plenty of comedies are funny. Why does Wanda work so well?

Explaining a joke generally ruins it, and dissecting a comedy feels like the exact same process. It’s difficult to

say why a given piece of humor resonates with one person and not another, or to explain what makes a specific

line memorable and quotable. Fortunately for Wanda fans, the people behind the film provided a handy

analysis kit, in the form of 1997’s Fierce Creatures. The latter movie featured the same writer, many of the

same crew members, three of the same producers, and the same principal cast, in completely different roles

that nonetheless hit the exact same character notes. And yet everything that works in Wandaflops around

in Creatures like a fish out of water. 

Audiences certainly agreed with that assessment. A Fish Called Wandawas an $8 million movie that became a

$100 million smash worldwide, won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Kevin Kline, and earned Best Director

and Best Screenplay nominations for director Charles Crichton and co-writer John Cleese. Fierce Creatures,

by contrast, was a $25 million follow-up that brought in $9 million. Wanda constantly turns up on critic- and

user-generated lists of the best film comedies of all time. Fierce Creatures… doesn’t. But Creatures isn’t a

wasted effort. Watching the two films back to back, it’s easy to see what doesn’t work in the later film—and to

learn, by comparison, what does in the earlier one.

A FISH CALLED WANDA TAKES THE TIME TO INTRODUCE ITS CHARACTERS.

Charles Crichton was a comedy legend who directed the first of the famed Ealing comedies (Hue And Cry),

and followed it with other classics: The Titfield Thunderbolt, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Battle Of The Sexes.

His direction mostly moves Wanda along briskly, jumping out of scenes before they have time to wind down,

and keeping the screwball banter brisk and lively. But he leaves time at the opening for a comparatively

leisurely look at each of the main players in their natural habitat. There’s British barrister Archie Leach (John

Cleese) in court, resting his case. American con artist Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis) walks out of a

diamond exchange, stopping to take a picture with a camera concealed in her purse. American weapons expert

Otto (Kevin Kline) naps over his Nietzsche (and another book that seems to be titledNinja), and, upon being

startled awake, first expertly shoots the alarm clock that woke him, then looks baffled and doofy. And then

there’s gentle animal-lover Ken Pile (Michael Palin), feeding his fish and greeting the one he named after

Wanda.

By the end of the opening-credits scene, viewers have a slight sense for four of the five leads: The stuffy

upper-class Brit and the quiet lower-class one, a smart/competent American and a stupid/competent one. The

fifth lead, George Thomason (a twist on the name of the actor who plays him, Tom Georgeson) declares

himself the minute he walks through the door, all rigid spine, unblinking glower, and terse, growled syllables.

By the time they start planning the heist that brought them together, barely five minutes have elapsed, and it’s

already clear how tangled the situation is: George and Wanda are a couple, Otto and Wanda are also a couple

and are lying about being siblings, Ken has a crush on Wanda, and Wanda’s playing them all against each

other. The movie has a tension before the crimes even start.

Fierce Creatures stars four of the same leads. (Georgeson just has a cameo.) Cleese, who co-scripted again,

this time with film critic and film documentarian Iain Johnstone, plays another stuffy Brit who learns to loosen

up and rediscover his passion for life. Curtis plays another beaming, sexy schemer on the make. Kline plays

another aggressive, Brit-hating, ugly-American alpha male who’s constantly trying to get into Curtis’ form-

fitting pants. Only Palin switches up his roles: Ken is a nervous, withdrawn man with a bad stutter, while

inFierce Creatures, Palin plays arthopod specialist “Bugsy” Malone, a hyper-verbal aesthete who can’t seem

to shut up.

But Fierce Creatures whisks into its story without establishing a rooting interest in the characters, or a sense of

urgency. It’s clear from the beginning that mega-tycoon Rod McCain (Kline again, in thick old-face makeup,

playing a character heavily and clumsily based on Rupert Murdoch) is a horrible bastard who keeps all his

employees fearful and desperate to please—including his son Vince (Kline), as well as Rollo (Cleese) and new

hire Willa Weston (Curtis), all of whom end up taking over and commercializing a small-time zoo together.

But their situation isn’t as complicated as Wanda’s, and their characters aren’t either. They’re drawn more

broadly, and without a narrative framework to focus viewers’ interests. Their takeover of the zoo is a broad,

sitcom-worthy story that leads to a series of loose anecdotes among characters who barely seem tied together,

and who barely seem like characters.

WANDA HAS A SENSE OF STAKES.

The lack of narrative framework comes from the story around those characters. Wanda centers on a heist,

where the leads steal millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds, then double-cross each other to control them.

George’s murderous glare and complete lack of a sense of humor (except late in the film, where he finds an old

woman’s death hilarious) makes it clear how much is at stake: If he learns Wanda is two-timing him with Otto

(and later, with Archie), he’ll probably kill everyone involved. And Wanda is playing a complicated game,

stringing along him, Otto, Archie, and sometimes even Ken, all simultaneously, while she plans to escape with

the diamonds on her own. The threat of violence—or, possibly even worse, just the idea of Wanda’s house of

cards collapsing, leaving her lies embarrassingly exposed—hangs heavily over the movie.

WANDA FINDS SEX AND VIOLENCE HILARIOUS; FIERCE CREATURES FINDS THE LACK OF SEX OR VIOLENCE HILARIOUS.

Part of Wanda’s daring—part of what makes it edgy and surprising—is its frankness about things that weren’t

often played for laughs in the 1980s. Crichton and Cleese aren’t precious about sex; they’re entirely willing to

throw their heroine Wanda into bed with anyone for fun, to let her use sex as a weapon or a game. But they’re

just as ready to turn sex against her, by exposing how much her fetishes control her. Just hearing Archie talk in

Italian is enough to get Wanda humping random objects in orgasmic excitement; even hearing Otto speak his

broken-Italian faux-romantic nonsense (which includes lists of cheese, random food orders, and requests for

directions to the Trevi Fountain) disarms her enough that she’s willing to put up with what looks like the worst

sex in history. Wanda can be tender and meaningful about sex—Archie’s plaintive come-on to Wanda, when

he promises he’s a good lover, or at least was long ago, is a shockingly sweet, sad moment in a movie that

doesn’t take most of its emotions seriously. But Wanda is also rambunctious, silly, and at times a little erotic,

as its characters get it on. It’s heavily implied that heartless, in-it-to-win-it Wanda falls for Archie first and

foremost because of the promise of sexual bliss.

The films have a similar relative attitude toward violence: Wanda kills those dogs and their feeble but fierce

old-lady owner, subjects Ken to torture and humiliation, and runs over Otto with a steamroller. Granted, that

last winds up feeling like something out of a Warner Bros. cartoon when Otto survives, especially since

roughly the same thing happened in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which came out the same year. But it’s still

more violence than anything in Creatures, which again, lacks a sense of commitment to its pretenses of

violence. People inCreatures fake violence to manipulate each other. Rollo pretends to shoot and bury some

zoo animals to keep his employees compliant and meek; they in return pretend they’ve been mauled by various

zoo animals, in an attempt to prove the beasts are fierce enough to interest jaded zoo-goers. They’re so inured

to their pretend violence that Rollo doesn’t recognize real blood when a zoogoer falls and scrapes her legs.

Even when actual violence does happen at the climax of the film, it’s of the conventional “Ding dong, the

witch is dead” variety, with a villain dispatched to enable a happy ending. Like the repeated “I think he’s at an

orgy” gag, the sex-and-violence shtick in Creatures is largely about slack misunderstandings and artifice,

which the audience is in on all along. There’s no sense that anything significant, serious, or subversive is going

to happen.

WANDA HAS A SENSE OF MYSTERY—AND A CENTER.

One of the biggest differences between the films is how they each handle Curtis’ character. In Wanda, she’s at

the center of every plot, playing the angles and coming up with new schemes on the fly. She’s smart and quick-

witted, with an elaborate plan, but the ability to cope when it falls apart. She has agency, but she can also be

swayed. She gives the audience a rooting interest in something happening onscreen: the twin questions of

whether she can pull off her elaborate con to divest all three of her potentially dangerous partners of the

diamonds, and whether the love of a good man can redeem her. And she keeps the audience guessing, given

her willingness to turn on the people she seems to care about. Without that ridiculous title-card ending

claiming that she and Archie “had 17 children and founded a leper colony,” there’d be no absolute certainty

that she didn’t ditch him as soon as she and the diamonds hit the ground together. 

Curtis plays Wanda with verve, and a rare mixture of kittenishness and ruthless intelligence. But in Creatures,

both those elements are defanged. She gives Willa a similar sense of ruthlessness with a soft side underneath,

especially once she has a close-up encounter with a gorilla that lets her see animals as something other than

mobile, self-replicating financial liquidity. (“Oh, you made contact,” one of the zookeepers says knowingly,

and all the other employees make little hums of agreement and approval, looking like a hippie cult

congratulating a square who just came down after her first hit of acid.) But Willa doesn’t have any sort of

nuanced plan, and she doesn’t have a character at all, beyond “girl Vince wants to screw who’d rather screw

Rollo because she thinks everyone else is doing it.”

Which would be fine if Creatures nominated someone to replace her, someone with an equally complicated set

of goals, and a similarly complicated path to follow—a dynamic character, in other words, one detailed enough

to have an interesting journey to follow. Rollo doesn’t qualify; he puts up a front, but he’s soft-hearted from

the start, and other character rapidly eclipse him. Bugsy is a bit player, and Vince is closer to a villain. And

even their tight circle, which sets up all the important business in Wanda, is diluted by multitudinous ill-

defined subsidiary characters in Creatures, which can’t find a central story amid the weak gags. 

FINALLY, WANDA IS FUNNY.

It can be hard to pin down comedies. In this case, it isn’t quite as difficult as it usually is. Wanda is quotable,

and full of the snappy, familiar, well-delivered lines Creatures is lacking. (“Ken, someone just called!” “It’s

fish, innit?!” “Wake up, limey fish!” “You’re the vulgarian, you fuck!” “It’s K-K-Ken! C-c-coming to k-k-k-

kill me! How you gonna c-c-c-catch me, K-K-Ken?” etc., ad infinitum.) The actors are committed—Kline’s

energetically physical performance is particularly intrinsic to the movie—the direction is tight, the jokes are

outrageous, and the characters are comedically exaggerated without completely losing track of how real people

think and act. Cleese and Curtis in particular have never been better in feature films. AndCreatures is none of

these things.