Fierce Creatures
A Fish called Wanda is the second most successful British film ever, and so it comes as little surprise that they have reteamed the same players to try and wrestle the record away from Four Wedding and a Funeral. Thus, we have Fierce Creatures not a sequel but involving all the same actors and writers.
Mega-tycoon Rod McCain (Kevin Kline) has recently acquired Marwood Zoo, and he expects at least a 20% return on any investment or he will close it down. Enter Rollo Lee (John Cleese) as the zoo’s new director who believes he can make this profit margin by stocking the zoo with only fierce creatures, animals billed as violent, man-eating predators because violent entertainment is what he thinks people want. Unsurprisingly, at the thought at getting rid of all the cute, cuddly animals the keepers (including, Michael Palin, and Ronnie Corbett) revolt. Meanwhile, Willa Weston (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Vince McCain (Kevin Kline again) arrive with plans to turn the zoo into a theme park. They proceed to make the situation even worse by using blatant and unsubtle advertising techniques, such as Bruce Springsteen sponsored tortoise, to raise profits.
However, Wilma begins to see the zoo as more than just an opportunity and begins to develop an understanding of the relationship the keepers share with their animals. Meanwhile, Rod McCain thinks that the zoo isn’t going to make the 20% (because Vince is embezzelling) and comes to visit with plans to turn the zoo into a golf course for the Japanese.
Though the actors are the same as in A Fish called Wanda, the parts they played are not similar to their roles in Fierce Creatures. Michael Palin, for example, hardly had any lines in Wanda (because of his character’s stutter) but in Fierce Creatures his character (Bugsy Malone) never stops talking. Kline again gets to play the bad-guy but this time his character(s) have no redeeming qualities and you can’t help but wish for one of the previous endings where he dies earlier. Speaking of endings, the reason why we have had to wait such a long time for this film, despite principal photography finishing mid 1995, is that the ending was reshot twice as a result of the reaction of test-audiences. (Admittedly there was a nine month delay because Palin was off on one of his around the world trips.) However, the ending as it stands now, despite the reshoots isn’t very appealing. The problem not so much lies with the denouement itself but with what precedes it. The plot is very cluttered with too many storylines and is constantly changing. The fierce creatures idea of the title only lasts for about the first third of the film before Kline’s character comes along and implements his scheme. As a result the Cleese character goes through a complete role reversal from initially being the villain to being the main protagonist and essentially the saviour of the zoo by the end. Its not just Cleese who seems to go through significant changes the script also calls for many of the other roles’ to change. Thus, it is little surprise that it was difficult for the film to come to a satisfactory conclusion given the mess that is made earlier. Part of the problem stems from trying to incorporate too many different characters (not even counting the animals). As a result the film is too loose, and with Cleese’s character seemingly doing a u-turn half way through, the film lacks a core around which the rest of the characters and scenes can play. In addition there is also the impression that several of the scenes have been included because they are funny rather than being especially necessary for the plot. Not that I want suggest the film isn’t funny - it certainly does contain some very funny scenes - it just seems that at times humour has been put ahead of developing the plot logically.
Many of the best jokes revolve around Cleese, and he carries them off brilliantly. There is more of a Basil Fawlty in this role, which is what he does best. However, despite Cleese’s, not unsubstantial, presence he can’t support the film on his own. The corporate sequences with Curtis and Kline are fairly lame, and the Rod McCain character is just crude and unoriginal. The film only truly shines when Cleese is on screen, and although he does have a lot of screen time, the difference is noticeable. Fortunately, most of the cast have a strong background in comedy and they help to lift not only their roles, which for most of them are fairly irrelevant cameos, but also some of the less funny scenes into something more respectable.
Providing you don’t go expectation of Pythonesque levels of genius, Fierce Creatures, despite its faults, still is a very amusing and highly enjoyable film, which is almost worth going to see for Cleese alone.
spooky
