From a downright hilarious and ever so British script from John Cleese and the last film of the brilliant British treasure director Charles Chricton, we follow the devious and nefarious plots and shenanigans of four very different characters as they are caught in a web of lies and the like following a robbery. Cleese is brilliant himself, and is his Python co-star Michael Palin, but I have to give it to the Americans here with both Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline on a more than exceptional form, knocking out of the park every single scene that they’re in.
- From my own ranking of the greatest comedies of the 80’s, where the film ranked 3rd
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Cleese should be the king here, he stars in the film and is brilliant, he has written one of the most perfect comedic scripts of the decade if not of all time and he did uncredited directorial work on the film also. But you just can’t beat Otto. Kline is ungodly funny in this film and even broke through the Academy’s very biased non-comedy slant at the Oscars, practically stealing the award for best supporting actor, not unlike what would be the modus oporandi for his nefarious limey-hating character. Cleese also broke this unwritten rule with a nomination for his screenplay. Losing to Rain Man, with other nominees including Big and Bull Durham. For me Wanda is the best script there, with Bull and Rain in a tie for second place. We have seen other comedies break through, but only in the nomination field really and relegated to supporting when it comes to performances. Bridesmaids was another standout comedy which received two nominations; Melissa McCarthy for supporting actress and a screenplay nomination for Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. That year they ultimately lost to Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris, who oddly enough seems to be the rule-breaker when it comes to comedies at the Oscars, with his obvious Oscar-sweeping Annie Hall. Perhaps it’s the interweaving of drama and philosophy that leads to voters putting Allen above your other average comedy.Not that of course I would ever refer to Wanda as "average".
William Goldman, perhaps the greatest screenwriter of the past 60 years oft touted There’s Something About Mary as the finest script of that year and I’d have to agree, the script for the film is note-perfect in its structure, comedy and heart in many, many moments of its running time. In many ways Mary seems to be a counter-part to Wanda, just with a decade between them. Both are flawless scripts directed brilliantly and elevated by an almost un-imaginable crop of supporting role knockout performance, all telling the tale of a group of rag-tag men fawning over the seemingly perfect woman. Which brings us back to Curtis. Both Mary and Wanda would fail immediately and fall at the first hurdle if Diaz and Curtis didn’t embody the extreme humour, sex and power demands of the roles of Mary and Wanda, but they are so incredible in the roles that you never stop for a single minute to question what the men are you doing for you are similarly falling head over heels with the women as they are – the true testament to Curtis and Diaz’s performances.
The film does actually in my eyes have some very underrated elements. Beginning with some of the other performances in the film that I feel get lost in the grand scheme of things when inadvertently out up against four of the greatest comedic performances in any film ever. Maria Aitken as Wendy, Archie’s very much put-upon and very much aggressive wife, is stunning in the role and steals a few scenes for herself, along with her daughter Portia, portrayed by Cleese’s real-life daughter Cynthia Cleese. Tom Georgeson stars as Georges Thomason, a brilliantly inside joke just in the naming of the character, but a fervent and villainous character beyond it’s name. Hell, Stephen Fry even pops in to show his face. If I were however to point out a flaw with the film it would be that the closing title cards relaying where the characters ended up, very much in the vein of the previous decade’s Animal House, weren’t as funny as they possible could have been. Each one feels a touch lacklustre in the midst of the wealth of top class comedy that we have previously viewed, especially with them being the final jokes we have before we go home. Sort of leads to a flat fart kind of feeling, albeit they're are still funny in isolation and perhaps it’s the film’s excellence working against itself by it being so damn funny before we see them.
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In 1989, when this movie was shown in theaters
in Denmark, a Danish man named Ole Bentzen, an audiologist, literally laughed
himself to death during the scene where Ken Pile (Sir Michael Palin) gets the
chips up his nose. Bentzen's heart rate went between two hundred fifty and five
hundred beats per minute and he eventually succumbed to cardiac arrest. The
story behind this is that the man had made a joke a few years earlier with his
family during dinner, where he put a piece of cauliflower up his and every
family members nose as a joke and made a bet with them on who could eat up
their carrots without the cauliflower falling out. When the scene with Ken Pile
and the chips came up, he started thinking about this dinner incident and
laughed so hard that his heart stopped. This story is well-known in Scandinavia
and spread around as almost an "urban legend" shortly after it
happened. It was confirmed by his son, who also told the dinner story as an
explanation to why his father laughed so hard during the chips scene that he
died.
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095159/trivia?item=tr0792525
The film is quite literally so funny that it made a person die, now how many films can you say that about? I’d wager it’s a very select and choice list.
- Thomas Carruthers
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