The new owners of a zoo decide that they will henceforth only house animals capable of causing serious injury, and the zookeepers do their best to subvert this policy. A decent enough idea. Unfortunately the idea was push-processed, with the script still being tampered with up to the moment of filming, resulting in a mess of a film.
There are many classic Cleese lines and situations (Cleese's little diatribe about meerkats, of all things, is hilarious), none of which are allowed room in which to breathe. Michael Palin very convincingly argues that his (harmless) tarantula ought be classified as a `fierce' creature, and John Cleese reluctantly agrees. This ought to have been taken further, with Palin piling sophistry upon sophistry until Cleese was forced to admit that butterflies are fierce; at the very least, the conversation ought to have SOME consequence or other. It doesn't. It's merely interrupted, so that we can watch more and still more zany zookeeper antics. Every scene, every idea, every tension in the script, treads on the toes of every other scene, idea, and tension, with the result that NONE of them are as funny as they could have been.
It hurts to say this, but there are also too many old chestnuts - like the one about the blithering John Cleese who is unable to utter three consecutive words without referring to Jamie Lee Curtis's breasts. Actually, that scene is one of the most cleverly written in the film. Really, it is. But so what? It's out of place and doesn't go anywhere.
A good comedy needs a backbone AND good writer. `Fierce Creatures' has the latter only - and fitfully at that. Still, it's vastly preferable to the OTHER kind of half-baked comedy, where the writers cook up a good story and forget to include any jokes.
There are many classic Cleese lines and situations (Cleese's little diatribe about meerkats, of all things, is hilarious), none of which are allowed room in which to breathe. Michael Palin very convincingly argues that his (harmless) tarantula ought be classified as a `fierce' creature, and John Cleese reluctantly agrees. This ought to have been taken further, with Palin piling sophistry upon sophistry until Cleese was forced to admit that butterflies are fierce; at the very least, the conversation ought to have SOME consequence or other. It doesn't. It's merely interrupted, so that we can watch more and still more zany zookeeper antics. Every scene, every idea, every tension in the script, treads on the toes of every other scene, idea, and tension, with the result that NONE of them are as funny as they could have been.
It hurts to say this, but there are also too many old chestnuts - like the one about the blithering John Cleese who is unable to utter three consecutive words without referring to Jamie Lee Curtis's breasts. Actually, that scene is one of the most cleverly written in the film. Really, it is. But so what? It's out of place and doesn't go anywhere.
A good comedy needs a backbone AND good writer. `Fierce Creatures' has the latter only - and fitfully at that. Still, it's vastly preferable to the OTHER kind of half-baked comedy, where the writers cook up a good story and forget to include any jokes.