With Fierce Creatures and its predecessor, A Fish Called Wanda, Cleese and Palin have left the realm of sketch-based, silly, nonlinear comedy and strayed into the territory of hackneyed romantic comedies. They managed to pull this off with A Fish Called Wanda, which retained some of the anarchic, uncontrolled edge of their earlier work--work that occasionally seemed to have popped unfiltered from somebody's unconscious mind. If A Fish Called Wanda was a pet, it would be something like a Siberian Husky--domesticated, but with a trace of wildness in it. Fierce Creatures, on the other hand, would be closer to a fluffed and groomed miniature poodle.

The problem seems to be that Cleese and co-writer Iain Johnstone have taken the featherweight demands of the romantic comedy to heart. Too much of this movie follows a basic formula familiar to us all, and there's nothing funny about watching things unfold precisely as we expect them to.

The plot involves a trio of high-powered executives who find themselves in charge of a zoo in England, and are under orders to turn the charming little menagerie into a high-profit venture. The three become involved in all sorts of machinations meant to save (or destroy) the zoo; Vince McCain (Kevin Kline) is the spoiled son of a tycoon intent on turning the business into a marketing marvel. His rival, Rollo Lee (John Cleese), is an evil man who's miraculously converted by the adorable antics of baby animals. At the center of the turmoil is Willa Weston (Jamie Lee Curtis), a provocative business woman who dresses for success by emphasizing her fabulous breasts and, trooper that she is, she doesn't even seem to mind when her boss cops a feel.

I'm willing to be a good sport, and I'm as cognizant as the next guy that there's a long tradition of humor that depends upon women's breasts. Nonetheless, I found the abject sexism in Willa's characterization sort of revolting. Willa smiles serenely as her male co-workers gawk at her cleavage and pester her for sex. Far worse than a straight-up bimbo is the character who's meant to be smart and powerful but is still a bimbo underneath. It's as if Willa's intelligence and power were nothing more than sexualized accessories--personality as a push-up bra.

Of course, these kinds of adolescent yuks--boob, fart and sex jokes--are the bread and butter of comedy. Monty Python has never really been above that, but they have been known to manage to water it down with stranger, more challenging types of humor. That doesn't happen in Fierce Creatures. The movie plods along with predictable twists and turns you can see coming for miles. Cleese and Johnstone never do anything to alienate their audience, but they never do anything really daring, either. Everyone in this movie is basically nice, and the antics, which involve cuddly animals, don't have the pathological edge we've come to love and expect from Monty Python. There's nothing as sinister as the dead parrot sketch. Nothing dies.

Though as a whole Fierce Creatures is a disappointment, there are a few wonderfully funny moments. As the zoo falls prey to the evil genius of marketing, the animals pick up sponsors: A tiger paces in his cage, wearing a bib that says something like "Absolute Threatening." Vince McCain installs an animatronic panda in a cage, on the crass but basically accurate theory that no one in England has ever seen a real panda anyway.