YMMV / A Fish Called Wanda

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • As evidence of just how much people like Michael Palin, audiences came up with excuses like "she must not have been a very nice old lady" to try and maintain Palin as a nice guy in their minds. Mind you, this is the same man who played a torturer in Brazil, and would play Vyacheslav Molotov, who weaselly disowns his own wife to save his skin, in The Death of Stalin, both times with his trademark cheerful charisma.
  • Archie's wife is presented as cold, nagging and uncaring, and Archie is one of the viewpoint characters, so we're meant to root for him. However:
    • He is having an affair. Comedic situations aside, it's he who betrays her trust;
    • Is the wife really that bad to him because she doesn't care? When Archie is kissing her, she says "that's so unlike you" and she seems happy, even delighted. It's not that strange that she wouldn't be very affectionate if she never seems to be on the receiving end of attention. When she thinks she got a gift from him, her reaction is genuinely thankful;
    • And the big one: she overhears Otto claiming Archie robbed his own house and is "porking" Wanda. She seems to give Archie the benefit of the doubt and not jump to conclusions. She only threatens divorce after Archie confirms her suspicions and humiliates her in public by calling Wanda "darling".
    • Considering all these, who is the villain in the situation?
    • Originally there was a scene where Wendy (after overhearing Otto talking about Archie and Wanda’s affair) is visibly upset and angry with Archie, but without revealing why to him. The creators decided to cut this scene when they realised it made Wendy seem Unintentionally Sympathetic.
• And You Thought It Would Fail:
  • The producers were worried about how this film would perform at the box office, particularly in the U.S. It was a British made, British set comedy made with a veteran British director, written by a British writer, with a British cast known primarily for television work plus two familiar but not A-list American actors (who were not particularly known for comedy roles either). Using the budget carefully It took John Cleese and director Charles Crichton four years to get the film made with and persuade MGM to take a chance and distribute it. Fortunately it proved to be a huge sleeper hit and made a tidy profit for those involved.
  • Michael Palin thought the script was awful when he first read it and recorded his low opinion of it in his diary.
• Comedy Ghetto: Kevin Kline's Academy Award was a rare win for a comedic role.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Ken's repeated attempts to kill an old lady, accidentally killing her dogs in the process (much to his despair, being an animal lover).
  • The DVD extras show that another running gag was dropped completely wherein Otto practices his marksmanship whenever he hears a cat by shooting its tail off (you see him shoot off screen then hear a yowl but later see him arranging the tails like flowers in a vase). It was dropped because combined with all the cruelty to dogs as well it really was crossing too many lines.
  • Michael Palin said that the film-makers filmed the reveal of the sadly flattened dog with guts visibly squashed out of it, which upset a test audience. They decided that the plain flattened dog was comically shocking while avoiding being gruesomely realistic.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Otto is an absolute blast to behold, thanks to Kevin Kline's fantastic scenery chewing and the wonderfully absurd nature of his jingoism. As mentioned above, the character was so great that it netted Kline an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  • There's also a great deal of love for Michael Palin's Ken, which won him a Best Supporting Actor prize from BAFTA.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Like any pre-9/11 movie, the lack of security at an airport is uncomfortable today. But going further back, keep in mind this film was released just a few months before Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up by a terrorist bomb on board. Pan Am 103 made its final stop at Heathrow.
  • The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue states that Ken becomes the master of ceremonies at London Sea World. Considering the revelations about SeaWorld's mistreatment of animals that have come out in The New '10s, it's unlikely that animal lover Ken would be too enthusiastic about that job. Though, given the irreverent nature of said epilogue, this could simply serve to make it more Hilarious in Hindsight from a Black Comedy perspective.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of the "Russian words" that Archie and Wanda whisper to one another is Molotov. Michael Palin portrayed Molotov 29 years later in The Death of Stalin.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Inverted The gang consists of Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, and... Tom Georgeson. No points for guessing who goes down for the crime.
• Retroactive Recognition: In the airport at the end, a young Stephen Fry appears as the man Otto robs.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Otto becoming South Africa's Minister for Justice meant a lot more in the Apartheid Era than it does today. Also, Otto's airport gun-tossing trick would never have worked post-9/11.
• The Woobie: Ken suffers from a severe stammer, is continually bullied by Otto and as an animal lover gets very upset when he keeps accidentally killing another one of Mrs. Coady's dogs instead of her.

---