Weekend Entertainment Guide

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MOVIES . . . FIERCE CREATURES: 'Fierce Creatures' is not a sequel in the usual sense of the word. But it does reassemble the key zanies of 'A Fish Called Wanda.' This time they are the mismanagers of a commercial zoo that has been acquired by a Murdochian media buccaneer (Kline plays him too, complete with down-under accent). They are charged with getting its profit margin up to his brutal rate (20%). Their plan is to dispense with all the zoo's sweet little fuzzballs and to stock the place exclusively with man-eaters. If violence sells on TV and in the movies, why shouldn't it do just as well for them? "The script, by Cleese and Iain Johnstone, lacks Wanda's mean and giddy inventiveness, and the directors, Robert Young and Fred Schepisi, don't wind their material very tightly," notes TIME's Richard Schickel. "Still, this good-natured movie is very much in the spirit of those ancient Ealing Studio comedies in which nice, silly people defend some enclave of old-fashioned sanity against the forces of brute modernism. And that's a tradition worth reviving."