Kevin Klines performance (here, with Michael Palin) as the insane, zealous, and ultimately stupid Otto won him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

A Fish Called Wanda–I’ve always been a huge John Cleese fan. Monty Python and The Flying Circus amused me, but their spin-off films (Life of Brian, especially) absolutely kill and Fawlty Towers is one of my favorite shows of all time. A Fish Called Wanda has always spiked my curiosity and interest but I’ve never had time to watch it until now (a lazy Sunday, on Netflix), and was not disappointed. Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline star as two thieves and lovers who try to double-cross their partner on a diamond heist, only to land him in jail and have the loot mysteriously relocated. Curtis’s Wanda tries to get close to the crook’s lawyer (Cleese), thinking he might know the diamonds’ whereabouts while Kline’s character’s jealousy spirals out of control. Going beyond that would be ruining such a hilarious farce filled with zany turns, outrageous characters, terrific gags–it’s just a great, great comedy. There’s really no other way to put it. John Cleese not only turns in a hysterical and warm performance, but drafts an excellently and comically complex script about the unachievable tasks that draw in the romantic and the stupid in all of us. One could see this as a clear inspiration for many of today’s crime comedies, notably those of the Coen Brothers. Curtis and Palin are funny and sweet in their respective roles, with the latter as a bumbling accomplice with a speech impediment and absurd love for animals, while Kline hinges in every edge of insanity there is. He bolsters, sweats, and screams his way through scenes, deftly portraying the dimmest of high hopes. One scene in particular involving him and Palin’s fish might qualify itself as one of the best hard-to-watch-but-still-downright-hilarious sequences ever put on film. A wonderful marriage between British comedy and the caper genre, A Fish Called Wanda is a smart, saccharine, witty achievement of Cleese’s–I’m now an even bigger fan. A-

Here’s a the trailer: