Director: Charles Crichton
Cast: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin
Defining moment: All of Kevin Kline’s scenes are magnificent – he won an Oscar, after all – but the bit where he invades Cleese’s country pile and has to contend with his toffee-nosed battleaxe of a wife takes the scone. ‘Now listen here, Mr Man-fren-jen-fren-son!’
An astonishingly low placing for perhaps the best British comedy since the heyday of Python (seriously, ‘Clockwise’ is higher?) With ‘Wanda’, John Cleese deliberately attempted to move away from the satirical silliness that made his name and back to a more inclusive, plot-driven, unmistakeably British brand of comic caper, even going so far as to rope in 78-year-old Ealing stalwart Charles Crichton to direct. The result is a barnstorming success: a film which, like its slippery American heroine, is madly in love with language, from tongue-teasingly delicious sarcasm to some truly outrageous swearing. Add to this four iconic performances (five if you count the inimitable Tom Georgeson as cockernee gangster George ‘Unbe-fackin’-lieveable!’ Thomason), and the result speaks for itself. Number 87? Unbe... etc. Tom Huddleston
No comments:
Post a Comment