One of the cleverest, quirkiest and wittiest madcap caper comedies ever made, that included members of the original anarchic Monty Python troupe with American stars - in a subversive and raucous tale that combined both British and American humor. The film recalls the British Ealing Studio comedies (such as Crichton's own The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955)) and Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941). As the tagline stated, the unexpected hit was "a tale of murder, lust, greed, revenge, and seafood," in which three eccentric thieves (Curtis, Kline, and Palin) battle the authorities and each other to recover a valuable cache of stolen diamonds.
All actors are perfect in their roles, especially the self-absorbed, not-too-bright ("Don't you ever call me stupid") Buddha-misquoting Anglophobe Otto West (Kline) and the stuttering, animal-loving hitman Ken (Palin). Features such bits as Ken's attempts at murdering an old woman that results in the deaths of her dogs (to his horror), Otto's constant tormenting of Ken ("Look! It's K-k-ken coming to k-k-kill me!") and conservative, uptight barrister Archie Leach (Cleese), Wanda Gerschwitz's (Curtis) use of sex to dominate the men in her life and her total arousal to foreign languages like Italian and Russian. The leads would team up again in the comedy Fierce Creatures (1997), in lieu of a sequel.
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