In 1996, John Cleese hired directors Fred Schepisi and Robert Young to direct the film Fierce Creatures which Cleese had written shortly after A Fish Called Wanda. When the film was released in cinemas in 1997, nearly most of the people and critics who saw it were disappointed with the film as it just didn't make anyone amused or interested because it wasn't nearly as funny as A Fish Called Wanda.
Fierce Creatures is a story about a New Zealand Businessman named Rod McCain (Kevin Kline) (a metaphor for Rupert Murdoch) who purchases a zoo named Marwood (based on Marwell Zoo in Hampshire, United Kingdom but is named after John Marwood Cleese) in London, England. The corporation that McCain owns Octopus Inc., requires it's investments to return 20% of the profits it earns to Octopus and if it doesn't it is sold or put on the scrapheap. McCain hires a retired British Hong Kong Policeman (John Cleese) to run the zoo. When the policeman controls the zoo he insists that the zoo adopts the new "Fierce Creatures" policy in which only very lethal animals will be kept in the zoo to increase popularity and revenue. This plan fails as the zoo keepers protest in favour of running the zoo the way it was normally run in the past. A businesswoman from Octopus Inc. played by Jamie Lee Curtis and the businessman son of Rod McCain (also Kevin Kline) quickly take control of the zoo with disastrous results.
When I first saw this film, my first impression was that it was not going to be as impressive as A Fish Called Wanda. I then saw it and thought to myself, should this film have called itself Fierce Creatures because we only see the moment of the Fierce Creatures within the space of half an hour and then it disappears with the film degrading out of control as soon as Kevin Kline enters as the son of the New Zealand Buisnessman. This character that Kline plays has moments of laughs but in the end could be described as nothing more than stupidly pointless. This is because he never seems to be of some use to the film, he's not enjoyable to to watch because he tries to get laughs with this character but he makes this character somewhat unlikeable. John Cleese's role in this film is foolish in the extreme, mainly because he is to old to be playing his character and his parts that are meant to be laugh out loud for example, the scene when the younger McCain and Jamie Lee Curtis pay him a visit about the zoo, they seem to think that he is philandering around with more than one woman when in fact he is trying to keep more than one animal quiet in his bathroom. There was more than one character I liked in this film and unusually it was the Michael Palin Character, who keeps a tarantula named Terry (after member of Monty Python, Terry Jones) and Rod McCain. I liked the Michael Palin Character because unlike A Fish Called Wanda where Palin played a stutterer who could not speak, he plays a chatterbox who does not shut up and there are some very amusing scenes with him. The character of Rod McCain was enjoyable because he insults virtually everyone around him and it is funny to see when he is usually on the phone closing down another enterprise and also getting the rights for China's public executions.
Fierce Creatures in a nutshell is a worn out, tiresome film that I think has destroyed a part of John Cleese and Kevin Kline's as they have not been in anything better after this film. It certainly was as good as I thought it might be.
I will give Fierce Creatures 2/4 stars. This was the count and you can see all my reviews via Reviews from the Count on Blogspot.
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