A Fish Called Wanda: Deep Thoughts About Comedy, Cultural Commentary, and Cartoonish Con Artists

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. You're the vulgarian, you fuck!Tracie expected to enjoy revisiting the classic comedy A Fish Called Wanda, but she forgot just how much of this film's humor was derived from cringe comedy (John Cleese speaking Russian in his underwear when a large family stumbles upon him) and punching down (the dubious "comedy" of making fun of Michael Palin's stutter), both of which made the film painful to rewatch.Wanda has some truly interesting cultural commentary about the differences between Americans and Britons, and Cleese's screenplay offers some brilliantly funny wordplay and storytelling that allowed Kevin Kline to ham up his role as Otto, the ridiculous epitome of American masculinity, all the way to an Oscar. But the well-crafted fiction comes with a side of homophobia and ableism that's just hard to watch in 2025--although the comedy beats are just as masterful as they were originally.Throw on some headphones, make sure you're on the correct side of the road, and take a listen!This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirlsWe are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find. We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!