Fierce Creatures -

Fierce Creatures is a wryly hillarious comedy that’s not a sequel, but from the same team of actors behind A Fish Called Wanda. Kevin Kline stars as media mogul Rod McCain who buys a small British zoo. Soon, a bumbling ex-cop, Rollo (John Cleese) is sent in to run the zoo and make it turn a profit. Rod then sends his son (also played by Kline), and a tv executive (Jamie Lee Curtis) to oversee Rollo’s work. The trio set about a wide variety of changes to the zoo, much to the consternation of the zookeepers (including Michael Palin), in order to commercialize the zoo and make it profitable. The film stutters only briefly in the beginning, during the setup, but once it launches into the zoo, the film unleashes an exotic menagerie of humor. From bawdy slapstick, to droll wit, to fiendishly dark humor, Fierce Creatures covers its bases. Not all the characters and situations pay off, but most of them do, and the film never dwells too long in one place, and so never becomes boring. There are several moments in Fierce Creatures that may be in bad taste…but they sure are funny, as is the rest of the film.