That was fun. I love robbing the English. They're so polite.
I remember what I was doing on this night twenty years ago: I was staying up to watch the Academy Awards to see if Kevin Kline was going to win Best Supporting Actor for his role in A Fish Called Wanda as the two-timing jewel thief with a inferiority complex. Happily he did and I was able to go to sleep that night secure in the knowledge that comedy could be recognized by the Academy when it was done well. (Sadly, this did not extend to John Cleese or Charles Chrichton, who were nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director, respectively. They didn't win in those categories at the BAFTAs, either, but Cleese did win Best Actor and Michael Palin walked away with Best Supporting Actor.)
I have no idea how many times I've watched A Fish Called Wanda over the past two decades, but it still makes me laugh out loud every time I see it and that is no small feat. All of the leads give hysterically funny performances -- not just Cleese, Kline and Palin, but also Jamie Lee Curtis (who had previously shown off her comic chops in Trading Places but not much else) as the triple-timing sexpot stringing them all along. Throw in Maria Aitken as Cleese's haughty wife, Tom Georgeson as a criminal mastermind who spends most of the film languishing in prison, Patricia Hayes as an old woman with some terribly yappy dogs, and Geoffrey Palmer as a judge whose court descends into chaos (not to mention Ken Campbell, John Bird and Stephen Fry) and you've got one of the greatest ensembles in comedy history.
None of that would matter, though, if the actors didn't have a clever script to work with and Cleese (who collaborated on the story with Crichton) provided them (and himself) with an ingenious one that features one brilliantly conceived and executed comic set-piece after another, all building to a fevered climax. There have been other films before and since that have played up the differences between Brits and Americans for comedic purposes, but few have ever been as witty. And if you doubt me, remember apes do read philosophy, they just don't understand it.