Fierce Creatures
Zookeepers struggle to deal with the policies of changing directors. Octopus, Inc., a massive corporate conglomerate run by shrewd, cruel tycoon Rod McCain (Kevin Kline), purchases both a UK-based leisure company and also the failing London Marwood Zoo. To bring more business to the zoo, Octopus hires a new manager, Rollo Lee (John Cleese), who promptly comes up with a way to increase profits: do away with all of the animals except the ferocious ones. This new Fierce Creatures Policy shocks the Marwood zookeepers, led by the unendingly talkative Adrian "Bugsy" Malone (Sir Michael Palin). Eventually, Rod McCain's son Vince McCain (Kevin Kline) and up-and-coming business executive Willa Weston (Jamie Lee Curtis), take control of the zoo and revoke the Fierce Creatures Policy. Vince instead comes up with many underhanded, vicious schemes to attract customers: unauthorized celebrity endorsements; shoddy, overpriced zoo merchandise; and using robotic animals instead of real ones. However, Vince is also stealing from the zoo's funds, and when his father finds out, he rears to turn the zoo into a Japanese-owned golf course. Meanwhile, Willa has grown to love the zoo and its animals, and she and her newly-reformed love interest Rollo plot with the zookeepers to save the zoo from the McCains. —Josh Martin <jmartin@netarrant.net> The owner and C.E.O. of Atlanta-based multinational corporation Octopus, Inc., worth $6 billion, is bombastic Aussie transplant Rod McCain (Kevin Kline). Rod's son, opportunistic Vince McCain (Kevin Kline), works for the organization as the marketing manager, despite Rod considering Vince a wuss, Vince just waiting for his father to die so that he can inherit the corporation, and Vince having previously stole from the corporation about which Rod is well aware and for which Vince served time. What Vince doesn't know is that even if Rod has any intention to die--which he doesn't--he doesn't plan to give Vince anything. Rod has a general policy that any of his assets has to net a twenty percent return on investment. Within one of Octopus' recent acquisitions is Marwood Zoo in England. Rod transfers one of his Hong Kong-based employees, straight-laced Rollo Lee (John Cleese), a former Police Officer, to run the zoo, and who just wants to do his job for the corporation, namely net that twenty percent return. As such, his first major change is to implement a policy of only housing what he considers the marquee animals, namely fierce creatures. This new policy does not sit well with the zoo staff, particularly the animal keepers, who do anything to convince Rollo that all of the animals at the zoo are important, while Rollo wants to show his staff at any cost that he is in charge. Rollo and the zoo staff have another enemy with arrivals from Atlanta. Willa Weston (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a new Octopus employee, who wants to run the zoo as Rod sold the asset for which she was hired to head on her first day with the company. Accompanying Willa is Vince, who mistakenly believes that Willa is interested in him romantically. While Willa wants to devise the model of zoo operation for the corporation, Vince has his own ideas of how to make a quick buck for the zoo and thus for himself, moves which sit well with no one but Vince. Willa and Rod, based on circumstantial evidence, mistakenly believe that Rollo is a ladies' man, who has multiple female sex partners during any of his liaisons. They all have yet another enemy when they learn that Rod is coming to England in a move to sell the zoo to a Japanese corporation, who want to replace the zoo on the property with a golf course. Through this entire process, Rollo and Willa come to some revelations about their feelings toward zoos and this zoo in particular, and about each other, which makes their priority to save the zoo from sale so that they can operate it together in their new vision. —Huggo
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