Friday, August 24, 2012

Fierce Creatures - 1997


It has come to my attention that the movies I’ve been reviewing lately are a little on the modern side having been shot and released within the last decade and in a few cases movies that are still in theaters.  It has also come to my attention, thanks to my brother(who loaned me The Babysitters insisting I would like it), that I am a cynical hard to please asshole that often takes issue with a movie even when I like it.  Due to these revelations I’ve decided to review I movie I actually love and I’ll try to have as few complaints as possible.


 Don't Pet Them

Normally I'd make fun of the tagline but this one is just weird and I have no idea what it means.  I can say this, pertaining to the movie this tagline makes absolutely no sense and is one of the worst I've ever seen.  I guess it makes sense because usually terrible movies have great taglines.

It’s not often that I review a comedy on my blog.  I just find it hard to praise a good comedy but exceedingly easy to trash a bad one and the same goes for my two favorite genres, Sci Fi and Horror.  I’d hate to sound old but I hardly watch comedies anymore because I just don’t get humor nowadays.  A perfect example is my indifference to The Hangover.  At the same time I laugh hysterically at old Munsters and Addam’s Family episodes.
Fierce Creatures stars one of my all-time favorite comedians John Cleese.  It also stars one of my least favorite actresses Jamie Lee Curtis.  For some reason a majority of the movies she’s in she’s considered desirable by both the director and lead characters(True Lies where she has both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Paxton fighting over her, Trading Places where she played a hooker with a heart of gold, and of course A Fish Called Wanda) and I’ve just never found her all that attractive.  Even before the lesbian tomboy hair cut I thought she looked rather manish.  Still that’s exactly the role she plays in this movie and yet for once it doesn’t bother me.(Before we go any further I did like Halloween(1978) and consider it a classic once again proving a good story can outshine it’s poor casting)
The movie opens at Octopus Inc. headquarters in Atlanta Georgia where Willa Weston(Jamie Lee) is starting her new job as the head of a local TV station.  When she gets there she learns that the president just sold the TV station she was going to manage and just acquired a zoo.  Meanwhile at the zoo an ex-cop and former Chinese TV station manager Rollo Lee(John Cleese), is sent to manage it.  In an effort to please his employers he implements a new policy to keep only fierce animals and to get rid of the rest. 
Willa and the president’s son(both the president and his son are played by Kevin Kline) are sent to oversee the zoo.  While there they implement new policies of their own which include humiliating uniforms for the zookeepers and some rather bizarre marketing gimmicks.  I’m not going to give away much more of the movie so go check it out I’m sure you’ll get a few laughs out of it.



While I do find the movie hilarious the major reason I’m so fond of this movie is because I love animals and it emphasizes man’s connection to nature far better than any movie I’ve ever seen.  In the midst of all the comedy it also makes some important statements about business ethics and greed.  Another reason I really like this movie is it stretches how far you can go in a PG-13 movie.  One character accidently gets shot in the head while the others try to cover it up and it is filled with a great deal of sexual innuendo.  No matter how many times I see this movie it never gets old or annoying and I’m always willing to watch it again. 95/100

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