Day of the 'Dog: "Fierce Creatures"

Today's underdog came along nearly a decade after the only comedy to be nominated for best picture: A Fish Called Wanda. Obviously, Wanda got lots of attention as did the actors starring in it. When the cast of Wanda got together again for Fierce Creatures, though, the film was scarcely a blip on the radar of most moviegoers.

I didn't see it in the theaters, either, but waited until it was out for rent and subsequently found myself laughing hard enough to stop the tape for fear of missing something else.

Some film fans have anxiety about seeing a movie with a returning cast - thinking it will be a tired version of the film that made them famous. But Creatures has actors such as John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Kevin Kline in completely different roles from Wanda, and is so autonomous that the two have little in common, and nothing in the way of cheesy, inside jokes as a wink and a nod to fans of the previous film.

These are - after all - accomplished actors, and there are some noteworthy acting additions that add flavor to the setting: a zoo on the outs in need of a financial face lift.

The comedy itself is a lot like Wanda - that is, very witty situation comedy and clever repartee between characters. You could just about listen to the whole things as an audio book and still laugh your butt off.

Why it deserves dog status: It could be that movie buffs still held such high regard for Wanda that to them anything like it would not fill such large shoes. It could be that Creatures got lost in the mix somewhere between a British and American film, which has certainly happened to other films, vis a vis underdog Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (which is just as good and very similar to the much more popular film, Snatch).

Either way, Creatures is a complete peach of a comedy that has tons of replayability and a simple choice for a crowd-pleaser, since it's more "Americanized" and therefore more accessible to mainstream viewers than many British or British-influenced films.

Too, you could never have seen Wanda (or anything remotely British for that matter) and still find Creatures as funny and original as long-time, self-proclaimed British humor fans who speak of Benny Hill as ranking just under the Messiah.