a movie called Wanda

John Scalzi's 'comfort watch' for yesterday was A Fish Called Wanda. I find I have some thoughts about that movie:

I agree with Scalzi that it's a fabulously funny movie, which I enjoyed tremendously on first watching. And for a long time afterwards, too, but on more recent rewatches I've found myself enjoying it somewhat less. (Except for Otto, a character so terminally stupid and fearlessly portrayed by Kevin Kline that way, that this still works.)

What I'm finding less appealing is what Scalzi calls the 'cringe humor.' Normally, like him, I dislike humor relying on embarrassing sympathetic characters, but Wanda was funny enough to immunize itself against this. But maybe as I've gotten more used to the scenario, the immunity wears off.

Scalzi mentions a couple forms of humor that probably wouldn't pass muster in a film made today. One is what he calls casual homophobia. I don't think that Otto trying to disconcert Ken by pretending to be sexually attracted to him is actually homophobic as the term is normally used. Ken isn't being repulsed at the existence of homosexuals, just at being propositioned himself. He's not shown as homophobic, just as emphatically not homosexual himself.

The line that Otto steps across is that of verbal sexual harassment, and that's objectionable regardless of the sexual orientation of anyone involved. If Otto were to treat a woman that way, it'd be perfectly understandable for her being as uncomfortable with it as Ken is.

The other problematic source of humor is Ken's stutter. Here again it's not that simple. The character who mocks Ken is Otto, and that's part of showing what a nasty and unsympathetic person Otto is. Wanda and George are comfortable dealing with Ken, whose stutter is less severe when talking with them - obviously it becomes stronger under stress.

Which leaves the encounter between Ken and Archie, when they're both frantic and accordingly Ken's stutter becomes very severe. It seems to me the source of humor here is not the stutter but Archie's frustration in dealing with it (his impatience, while understandable, is a flaw in his character). But I shouldn't be surprised if those with stutters disagree about that.

Scalzi says to ignore the plot, but there's a plot problem with the movie that weighs on me more over time. The reason Wanda seduces Archie is because Archie is George's lawyer and might know where George has hidden the diamonds. Perhaps it's Wanda's unfamiliarity, as an American, with the British legal system that trips her up here, because, as the barrister, Archie is merely a hired hand; he has little direct contact with George and is not in his confidence. The person who is in George's confidence is his solicitor, who is George's actual lawyer in the normal sense, and he does know about the diamonds, as is shown by his passing secret messages between George and Ken. It's the solicitor, not the barrister, whom Wanda should have seduced, but the solicitor is a minor character and, unlike Archie, he's not sexy, so there'd be no movie there.