ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, January 25, 1997             TAG: 9701280123
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 12   EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER 

'FIERCE CREATURES' NO 'FISH,' BUT HAS BAD SMELL

Don't run out to see "Fierce Creatures" expecting a sequel to the wonderfully funny "A Fish Called Wanda."

The only fish in this movie is held in the mouth of an attractively proportioned young woman in the sea lion pool at the zoo that's at the center of this story.

The fish in that particular mouth seems perfectly symbolic, too, for a movie that wants to be as funny as its predecessor, but is embarrassingly breast-obsessed.

True, the Python guys were always pretty preoccupied with 'mams, but they made fun of that preoccupation at the same time. John Cleese, who co-wrote this movie with Iain Johnstone (an English film critic), seems to have lost his light touch, so to speak. Frankly, this movie is so humorlessly breast-obsessed that one feels that the starring pair - Jamie Lee Curtis' - ought to have been named in the credits.

It would be easy to overlook this problem if it weren't so, shall we say, in our face (wardrobe by Russ Meyer, apparently). And it wouldn't be so irritating if this movie weren't so funny at times and if the inevitable boob jokes didn't knock the wind out of so many scenes.

Luckily, Curtis, who plays aspiring executive Willa Weston, and her pair aren't in all of them. The movie is funniest in its earliest scenes at England's Marwood Zoo, which has recently been taken over by a Rupert Murdoch-like media mogul named Rod McCain (Kevin Kline). Rollo Lee (Cleese), who works for McCain's company, has been installed as the zoo's new director to bring it up to 20 percent profitability.

Lee decides that the way to do that is to give the public what it wants and that is violence, and so the zoo must rid itself of all its cute, cuddly creatures. The zoo's staff responds first with outrage, then with an ill-fated - but absolutely hilarious - effort to persuade Lee that coatis, meerkats, lemurs - even anteaters can be vicious if provoked.

Michael Palin, the zoo's bugkeeper, tries a more academic approach, and that is to point out quite long-windedly the very many ways all the insects of the world can be deadly. This gives Palin an opportunity to speed-speak in absolute contrast to his stuttering "Fish" role.

Along come Willa Weston and McCain's idiot son, Vince, also played by Kline, to take control of the zoo. They are of like mind about turning the zoo into a cash cow until Willa has a religious experience with a gorilla. No joke.

A clue to this movie's biggest problem is in the directorial credits: there are two names there. Robert Young is mostly a British TV director. Fred Schepisi has done some really good movie work, especially directing "Six Degrees of Separation." But two directors do not a single focus make, which might explain this movie's divided intentions.

But it is sometimes quite funny. And we realize that the boob thing might actually recommend the movie to a certain segment of the public.

Still, it's no "Fish" and just barely worth catching.

Fierce Creatures

** 1/2

A Universal Pictures release showing at Valley View Mall 6 and Salem Valley 8. 93 minutes. Rated PG-13 for bawdiness, breasts and bad language.

LENGTH: Medium:   67 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  1. Michale Palin, John Cleese, Jamie Leigh Curtis and 
          Kevin Kline are a team again for "Fierce Creatures." color. 2. Kevin
          Kline and Jamie Leigh Curtis in "Fierce Creatures."