A delightful, sexy farce featuring the same lead actors as A Fish Called Wanda–John Cleese (who wrote the script with Iain Johnstone), Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin–in a very different story, this one entertaining various revenge fantasies against Rupert Murdoch. The Murdoch-like tycoon (played by Kline), who runs a company called Octopus, sends one of his bureaucrats (Cleese) to an English zoo to make its operations more profitable or else close it down. The horrified staff of animal lovers plots various forms of revolt, while the tycoon’s crass and unappreciated son (Kline again) and an ambitious new Octopus employee (Curtis) come up with schemes of their own. Combining the gentle with the vulgar as only the English can, this lively comedy is bursting with character and energy, and directors Robert Young and Fred Schepisi–the latter completed the movie–do a fine job of keeping it all rollicking. Burham Plaza, Ford City, Lincoln Village, 900 N. Michigan, Webster Place, Golf Glen, North Riverside, Old Orchard. –Jonathan Rosenbaum

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still.