Series Link 06.10.08: The Pink Panther

Posted by Arnold Furious on 06.10.2008

Of course it won't be easy; nothing worthwhile ever is. That is why I have always failed where others have succeeded. – Inspector Clouseau

Series Link #1: The Pink Panther

Of course it won't be easy; nothing worthwhile ever is. That is why I have always failed where others have succeeded. – Inspector Clouseau

SERIES LINK

Frequently when reviewing movies I notice I'm missing sequels here and there from classic series. In line with one of my key film watching beliefs I'll be making a point of tidying up some of my sequel history. The belief in question being that as long as I enjoyed the original I'll watch any sequel made of it. I don't know where this belief came from but it's one that seems to work out for me quite frequently and there are many film series where I have enjoyed multiple sequels based on my love and respect for the initial instalment (Alien, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Rocky etc). For this initial clean-up attempt I selected a series currently being re-made and one where I'd not seen any of the chapters in some considerable time. Here I present to you…

Series Link #1:

"The Pink Panther/Inspector Jacques Clouseau"

How many films?

Ten (eleven if Pink Panther 2 goes ahead as planned)

Starring?

Peter Sellers (5 times), David Niven (3 times), Herbert Lom (7 times) and Bert Kwouk (7 times).

Directed by?

Blake Edwards (8 times).

Series Span:

If 2009's planned Pink Panther 2 goes ahead the series will have spanned a frankly incredible 46 years.

The Pink Panther (1963)



After I watched Steve Martin's failure to recapture the magic of the Pink Panther with his 2006 remake I felt the need to pick up the original films. At the time they'd just been re-released as a box set on DVD (Pink Panther, Shot in the Dark, Strikes Again, Revenge & Trail of the Pink Panther). Costing £55. Fuck that. I'll wait for it to come on sale. It's been worth the wait as I snagged them for £15 recently. Eager to experience Peter Sellers ‘Clouseau' I slapped in the first disc in the series and watched the Pink Panther. What I'd forgotten was the original film didn't centre around Clouseau at all. The film was a David Niven vehicle. Sellers himself wasn't too well known outside of the UK where he'd appeared in a lot of successful films. He became much more of a star in America because of this film and Dr Strangelove, which he starred in the following year. So Niven is cast in the lead as a cat burglar, the famous Phantom, while Clouseau almost plays the bad guy as he's the bumbling detective sent after him.

There's no denying that Sellers stole the film. His opening scene featured him spinning a globe before dramatically turning around to address his assistant. Forgetting he'd just spun the globe he goes to lean on it and the spin drags him to the floor. It may be the greatest character entrance of all time. He follows this with a series of remarkable pratfalls. It doesn't have the majesty of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp but it's certainly related. Perhaps a distance cousin or a bastard French offspring. Sellers worked so many pratfalls in that it was part of the fun watching to see when he'd do the next one. Frequently struggling with the most simple of things like turning the wrong way out of a door or tripping down or up steps. Even opening a door proves tricky and that's where the brilliance of Sellers comes in because he keeps the same essential pratfall funny over and over again. Chaplin was far more innovative but Sellers is brilliant in his own way. This is why Martin's Clouseau failed because he didn't work in as much slapstick. The slapstick is what makes Clouseau. Sellers wasn't even the first choice to play the role in 1963 as it was offered to Peter Ustinov first. However Sellers made the character his own and increased his screentime during the first film. Subsequent ‘Panther' movies have focused entirely on Clouseau.

While there's probably too much focus on David Niven, Robert Wagner and Claudia Cardinale (who couldn't even speak English and was dubbed) every time Sellers comes onscreen he lights it up. The ending is terrible and totally unsatisfying but they'd learn from what worked here and go full on with Clouseau. The sequel came only 3 months later.

A Shot in the Dark (1964)



The speed of this sequel was for a reason. Sellers had been working on the film but wasn't happy with how it was going. The studio called in Blake Edwards to fix it and he re-wrote the failing film as a Clouseau movie. Which explains why it doesn't really have many connections with the first Pink Panther film (in fact the film was completed BEFORE the Pink Panther but the studio didn't think it was any good and shelved it. They were forced to re-think when the Pink Panther was a hit). What it does have are some of the key elements of the Clouseau history arriving for the first time. Namely Clouseau's twitchy and psychotic boss Commissioner Dreyfuss (Herbert Lom) and his house boy Kato (Bert Kwouk). This provides Clouseau with two characters to continually play off. In a Shot in the Dark it's Lom that has slightly more to do than Kwouk getting in his trademark tick and slicing his thumb off for giggles. Clouseau becomes more of a centrepiece for the second film as he stole the show in the first one. Because this film has next to no connections to the Pink Panther the wife character has gone. Replaced as Clouseau's love interest is big titted blonde Elke Sommer (although it was originally cast as Sophia Loren). She plays Maria Gambrelli the main suspect in a murder case at a mansion. Clouseau is the only one convinced she is innocent.

The weird thing about A Shot in the Dark is that it's a whodunnit BUT we see the entire murder play out before the opening credits. So we know ‘whodunnit'. But we don't know why. Clouseau is left bumbling around and executing one pratfall after another to keep the audience entertained. He enters the film by stepping out of his car into a fountain. It's not quite as good as the globe from the Pink Panther but it's close. Incidentally the globe pops up again with Clouseau trapping his fingers in it ("I've got Africa all over my hand"). They also work in some fine running gags like Clouseau getting himself arrested every time he goes undercover, the long ‘synchronising watches' bit and the mystery assassin killing people by accident when aiming for Clouseau. Perhaps the greatest running gag is one that made it into subsequent films; the fights with Kato. Clouseau tells Kato to attack him at any time to keep his wits sharp then goes for a bath. Kato walks around the room twice putting stuff away from the last fight then thinks about what was just said and charges into the bathroom with a flying kick. Here's the watch synchronising scene from YouTube…



Inspector Clouseau (1968)



If you're sat there thinking that you don't recall this film it may be for good reason. Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards weren't interested in making a follow up to the double shot of the Pink Panther & a Shot in the Dark. But the studio was because of the potential for making money with another Clouseau movie. So they re-cast and went about making their own Clouseau movie. Without the script of Edwards nor the acting talent of Sellers. They took the second best in terms of script going with Edwards collaborator Frank Waldman (who also wrote The Party, Sellers & Edwards film from the same year). Waldman can't have done a bad job as he was invited back to co-write later Panther movies and his name has become synnomous with the series. He was joined by Party co-scribe Tom Waldman. Although the duo would not write together again until 1982's "Trail of the Pink Panther" where they received a writing credit for various clips that Edwards re-hashed into that film.

Alan Arkin won the role of Clouseau and although he was an accomplished actor and psychical comedian he was never up to the job of replacing Sellers whose iconic performance as Clouseau made the role almost impossible for someone else. In fact Arkin has such a hard time with it that he sometimes overdoes the Clouseau to a point where Sellers didn't reach in the opening two films. The film also stars none of the support players from the first two films. No Herbert Lom or Bert Kwouk to keep things moving along. Instead it's a clean break from those films with Clouseau sent to London to work on apprehending the Great Train Robbers. The script is extremely weak and rarely gives Arkin good enough material to be funny. His pratfalls are decent but without the character its just an actor falling over props. I wouldn't lay the blame on Arkin for the failure of Inspector Clouseau as a film though. He's capable in his role. But it's a role defined by a comedy genius and any attempt to play it would almost inevitably result in failure.

It's not a total disaster as there are little tips of the hat to the series including a misunderstanding with a French traffic cop and a guy carrying balloons (both from a Shot in the Dark). Clouseau's love interest is played by Delia Boccardo (whose career high was Tarkovsky's Nostaghia). She's good looking but the connection between the two is rather tame and the love story doesn't get a look in. Its as if Waldman was thinking "I can put this in later" and then forgot. Its not like Inspector Clouseau was running long. It barely gets up to 85 minutes. The most promising aspects of support come from a game Beryl Reid as a crazy Scottish woman married to Superintendent Weaver (Frank Finlay) who has a thing for Clouseau and Barry Foster (from Hitchcock's Frenzy) although he only gets a few scenes. At the end of the day this was designed to make money based on the good name of Inspector Clouseau but as soon as they realised that Peter Sellers wasn't on board the public ignored it and Clouseau went back onto the shelf until Sellers was willing to repeat the role.

BEST BIT – The lifting of the usual Clouseau cartoon to open. This clip also shows Arkin as Clouseau if anyone was interested in seeing it. Sellers would have done more with the opening gags IMO.



The Return of the Pink Panther (1974)



After an 11 year gap following the double release of the Pink Panther and a Shot in the Dark the forces involved in those two movies decided it was time for a follow up. Both Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers were both interested in making another Clouseau movie. And there was much rejoicing. They actually went full out in an attempt to recapture all the glory of the original two films bringing back Herbert Lom, Bert Kwouk and they also sent an invite out to David Niven. He was unavailable, sadly. His part went to Christopher Plummer. Now, I like Plummer. He's a great actor with a solid range and he's appeared in a lot of good movies over the years. Sadly his part in the Return of the Pink Panther isn't one of his best performances. He's remarkably bland. Perhaps attempting to recreate the laid back style of Niven. Unfortunately he never gets there. So his parts of the film are shockingly boring. Especially when offset by Sellers. And speaking of Sellers his Clouseau has transformed since a Shot in the Dark. His accent has become more pronounced with him frequently mispronouncing words and his bumbling has reached a much higher level. He was always remotely competent in the earlier films even if he was somewhat fortunate. In the Return of the Pink Panther he's been pushed back to total idiocy making Dreyfuss' attempts to kill him, based on him being driven insane by Clouseau's incompetence, perfectly reasonable. Previously he seemed to be over-reacting somewhat. Return also has some great fight sequences with Cato, as Kwouk takes to hiding around the set and jumping out when Clouseau least expects it. This follows on from the part in a Shot in the Dark where he insists Cato attack him entirely at random.

Return of the Pink Panther was a huge success grossing $17M when that was a lot of money. With the cast in place another film seemed certain despite claims from Edwards and Sellers that this collaboration would be the last one for the Clouseau franchise. Amazing what big box office results will do to change people's minds. And Sellers did need money in the 1970's with his career having taken a rapid downturn during the decade. The sense of dumbing down of the Clouseau character was probably a direct result of Sellers' desire to carry on making movies. You get the feeling if he hadn't agreed they'd have made the film regardless. That said the dumber Clouseau is great for laughs. The fights with Cato in Return of the Pink Panther are perhaps the best in the entire series and Clouseau gets in a lot of psychical comedy. There's even a tribute to Charlie Chaplin at one point as Clouseau and a bell boy (Mike Grady aka Barry from Last of the Summer Wine) slide around on a wet floor outside a steam room. I think it's the part of the entire series that I laughed the most at apart from the globe gag in Pink Panther. There's also a fine scene in the style of the classic globe scene where Sellers leans on a drinks trolley, which inevitably slides away sending ice flying everywhere. It's also a film shot in one of those eras where racism wasn't such a big issue. I remember being particularly shocked by Closeau's constant references to Cato's skin colour. "My little yellow friend". Despite these moments where the film has aged quite badly and the slower parts featuring Sir Charles (around the hour mark the film really drags for about 10 minutes) Return of the Pink Panther was a big success. Yes, its dumber than the first two movies but since when was stupidity a crime? Clouseau is equally as funny here as during the first two films even if so many of the great little set pieces have been replaced by scenes of massive destruction to compensate for the lack of genius.

BEST BIT – A fine example of the destruction as Clouseau dropkicks a kitchen.



The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)



Believe it or not the Pink Panther Strikes Again is my favourite in the series. Hot off the ressurrection of the series in the Return of the Pink Panther, Blake Edwards was full of ideas for set pieces that Clouseau could work into the film. And that's part of the joy of Strikes Again. Its practically ALL Clouseau. The side distractions of the other films are gone. The love interest Olga (Lesley-Anne Down) doesn't even appear until close to the end to eliminate the need for clumsy love scenes. The whole love interest part is mostly making fun of the James Bond series and in general this film contains more spoof than the previous entries. In particular Herbert Lom's character Dreyfuss who's been committed to a mental institution. An early visit from Clouseau sends the recovering Dreyfuss over the edge and he escapes intent on Clouseau's murder. He spends a lot of his time, as the central villian, sat in front of an organ ala Phantom of the Opera. Having Lom elevated to main villain allows existing friction between the two central characters to get explored a little more and the plot makes sense as a result. Of course Bert Kwouk also returns as Kato. There are sly references to previous fights as Clouseau checks the fridge for the hiding Kato as that's where he was previously. The fight in the apartment in nothing short of exquisite. Clouseau is at his pratfalling best in Strikes Again. In particular his leap off the parallel bars down a flight of stairs. When he lands he rolls effortlessly into questioning the assembled household staff. Then attacks a suit of armour. The comedy sequences in Strikes Again can match any of those elsewhere in the series. In particular the picking off of assassins, borrowed from a Shot in the Dark, and the entering of the castle via grappling hooks.

Lom's Dreyfuss is replaced in the office by British official Superintendent Quinlan (Leonard Rossiter). He's so good at the role it's disappointing he doesn't appear in future films apart from "Trail of" in scenes deleted from Strikes Again. Rossiter is every bit as good as Lom as the irritated superior. Clouseau does as much to rub Rossiter up the wrong way in two scenes than he did to Lom over two whole films. The film does suffer from repetition as a lot of the content has already been used before in previous Clouseau movies BUT having all the good stuff crammed together in one film makes for a series of chuckles. Its like buying the ‘best of' a band that you really like instead of picking up 4 or 5 different CD's. There's a very strong chance this was the first Clouseau movie I ever saw as it was on TV a lot when I was younger. I have fond memories of many scenes especially Dreyfuss spying on Clouseau, the castle, the dentist, Quasimodo and "does your durg bite". It's a more rounded movie in many ways than the previous instalments with a fine assortment of gags. The repetition is forgiveable and perhaps not noticable unless you'd seen the other films recently. The comedy is at its broadest and designed for mass-market consumption making it arguably the most satisfying of the sequels.

Sidenotes – this is the first "Pink Panther" film to make no reference to the Pink Panther diamond. The name "Pink Panther" had just become synomous with Inspector Clouseau and therefore was used for the remaining titles in the series. Also 20 minutes was cut out of this film to get it down to a 100 minute run time. The 20 minutes cut out included a lot of visual gags, which later appeared in Trail of the Pink Panther after Peter Sellers had died.

BEST BIT – Clouseau arrives home and searches for Kato before he attacks him unaware that Dreyfuss has broken into the apartment below him and is watching his every move.



The Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)



This was the final Pink Panther film that Peter Sellers was alive to see come to fruition. Everything that happened in Strikes Again is swiftly forgotten as Herbert Lom's Dreyfuss, blinked out of existence at the end of Strikes Again, is once again in a mental institution. The only hint that the events in Strikes Again even took place occur when Clouseau looks on top of his four-poster bed for Cato before another of their fights breaks out. Which was his hiding place in Strikes Again. Sellers is notably less mobile than in the previous two entries thus resulting in the slapstick being toned down and replaced with more ‘costume' gags. Although Sellers does deliver as the "Godfather" near the films conclusion where dressed as an Italian mobster he managed to sneak "Al Pacino" into his Italian gibberish. The plot for this one sees Sellers battling an assortment of boring bad guys seeking to rub him out. That is until he's car-jacked by a crossdressing hitchhiker. The hitchhiker in question drives right into a hail of bullets leaving the world believing that Clouseau is dead. Dreyfuss is promptly healthy again and gets released from jail to pursue Clouseau's killers to Hong Kong. Of course he thinks he's going mad again when he catches glimpses of the supposedly dead Clouseau at every turn. Meanwhile Cato has transformed Clouseau's apartment into a whorehouse to pay the bills. The ethnic stereotyping of Cato gets kicked up a notch during Revenge with him sporting coke bottle thick glasses approaching the denouement producing the same level of comedy as James Hong's blind man in Balls of Fury. In other words, not much at all.

The usual excellent set pieces all appear very rushed in Sellers' last appearance as Clouseau and the usual epic payoff is severly understated. Perhaps due to Sellers' deteriorating health. He was 53 at the time and only two years away from a fatal heart attack. Opposite him this time is a very bland Dyan Cannon. She does more acting with her hair than through the tradition approach of speech and movement and is alarmingly irritating. Clearly both star and director were running low on ideas. Although Sellers successfully pitched to make his own Inspector Clouseau movie "the Romance of the Pink Panther". It was approved and ready to go into production at the time of his death. His unfortunate demise resulted in Blake Edwards returning with a brace of films connected to tracking down Clouseau.

BEST BIT – Sellers dresses up as a Swedish sailor and sings badly.



The Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)



Peter Sellers passed away from a heart attack in 1980. Trail starts off with a message that reads "for Peter, the one and only Inspector Clouseau". What follows is a hodge-podge of clips and stuff that wasn't good enough to make it into Revenge & Strikes Again. Even a potentially entertaining opening sequence (the theft of the Pink Panther diamond) is handled really poorly with some guy just walking into the exhibit at night and nicking the diamond. What happened to all the lasers and security and whatnot? Yanno, that made it so damn hard to steal the jewel in the first place? Alas Blake Edwards, in frankly full on hack mode, is in a hurry to get to paying tribute. There are a few moderately funny scenes, albeit totally unconnected, of Clouseau just wandering around doing shopping and setting fire to his office. I couldn't help but feel if Blake Edwards wanted to pay tribute to his friend he should have just put out a ‘best of' with outtakes and deleted scenes from previous movies and just done away with any pretense of plot. After all the film doesn't go anywhere. After Clouseau bundles his way through 30-40 minutes interspered with Herbert Lom doing his crazy man twitching his plane disappears. Lom, as before, is cured and released from hospital and Joanna Lumley goes in search of Clouseau. She's a French TV reporter called Marie Jouvet looking for interviews with Clouseau's former colleagues and enemies. David Niven returns three movies too late to do an interview that lasts all of 2 minutes. For that he makes it onto the poster. Harvey Korman has a decent cameo as Dr Auguste Balls; the designer of Clouseau's disguises. Unwittingly the best disguise being his own as I didn't even recognise him.

Once Lumley is on the case the film degenerates into a clip show. The interview with Cato in particular shows this. "He instructed me to attack him at random". CUE CLIP! "And then we had another fight". CUE CLIP! Awful, awful stuff. The only good thing about it being another chance to relive some of Sellers high points as Clouseau. A load more come during the closing credits, showcasing his best work in the role. But there's no recovering from a plot that is senseless and goes nowhere, the horrific dubbing and the fact that Peter Sellers is dead. Sellers' wife Lynne Frederick successfully sued Blake Edwards for over a million dollars claiming this film insulted the memory of her late husband. While I don't think it's an insult it's certainly a rubbish film. Edwards heart was probably in the right place but that doesn't explain the advert at the end of the credits for the forthcoming release of the Curse of the Pink Panther. There's a suggestion he's really milking the cash cow. The only fresh footage that's any good is of Richard Mulligan playing Clouseau's clumsy father in a Sellers inspired turn.

BEST BIT – Any of the Sellers scenes or perhaps the compilation of the ‘best of' clips that end the film. None of it is on YouTube because the film is so terrible no one wants to remember it.

Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)



Oh the horror. The original plan for the series had been a re-boot starring Dudley Moore as Clouseau and Peter Sellers own script for the Romance of the Pink Panther becoming the starting place for said re-boot. Edwards rejected the idea in favour of two films shot at the same time aiming to breathe new life into the series with a new character. And no, that wasn't Marie Jouvet. It was Clifton Sleigh (Ted Wass) an incompetent American detective assigned by Herbert Lom to locate Clouseau. Edwards presumably was intent on making a series of films based on Sleigh's capers under the Pink Panther banner. To be honest, I'd have rather had Dudley Moore. Or even better just an end to the franchise. But then Blake Edwards wasn't at his most creative during the 1980's. His clinical directing performances in the 60's had included Breakfast at Tiffany's were now a thing of the past. By the 80's he was making really bad Ted Danson movies. His high point during the 80's was Blind Date, a popular but dreadful movie that threatened to sink the fledgling career of Bruce Willis.

Anyway, back to Curse. In many ways it's a much better film than it's immediate predecessor. For starters the film has characters and character arcs instead of being a clip show with no ending. Many of the timeless Clouseau support team make appearances including Auguste Balls (Harvey Korman), Cato (Burt Kwouk) and Charles Litton (David Niven). In fact it's the final film of David Niven's career as he died shortly afterwards. He has very little to do and most of the action centres around Dreyfuss (Herbert Lom) and Sleigh. Alternating from one to the other after Sleigh's arrival sees Dreyfuss hospitalised after falling from his office window. It's one of the better pratfalls in the film and Lom works in a few that draw genuine laughs. Quite the surprise. That's not all though. After all how many movies can you see where Leslie Ash fights a ninja? One, I believe. The film has the added bonus of being suffiently early in Leslie's career that she's still smoking hot. You also get to see Joanna Lumley's tits, which is quite the bonus. Now the confusing part; Joanna Lumley returns here but not as Marie Jouvet but rather Countess Chandra. She's the woman who ordered the Pink Panther diamond stolen at the beginning of Trail and now she's intent on keeping it. Because Jouvet doesn't appear at all in Curse it's hard to say if Jouvet & Chandra are supposed to be the same person or not. Probably not. But then with several actors playing Clouseau during the course of this film it's hard to say.

Speaking of playing Clouseau, that's where Curse throws up one of it's quirkiest casting choices. Roger Moore plays Clouseau at the films conclusion creating a few chuckles in the process with his dodgy French accent and Clouseau mannerisms. The big problem with Curse is not Clouseau but rather the bumbling Sleigh. Ted Wass was miscast as Sleigh and struggles to assert himself in the role. Mainly due to his total lack of personality. Wass' inability leads to Sleigh's failure as a character. Oddly enough that's the only major flaw that Curse runs into. The connections to the Phantom, Clouseau and everything else that made up the backbone of the Panther series is there. Had Peter Sellers lived to play Clouseau and Sleigh been played by someone more competent it could well have been a fine film. After all many of the sight gags are effective even if some of the set pieces once again borrow from previous Clouseau films. It's just that the film is so poor at times during Sleigh's segments that it drags the whole thing down. In particular the scene where he's playing an undercover hooker to stop attacks on old ladies in New York. Just a woefully unfunny scene.

BEST BIT – Seeing as I can't locate Roger Moore's performance on YouTube here's something that the Pink Panther series did consistently well; Henry Mancini's music and the animated credits sequence.



Son of the Pink Panther (1993)



So ten years had passed since the failure of Ted Wass and the attempted re-boot of the Pink Panther franchise. Blake Edwards was eager to try again. This time he recruited Italian actor Roberto Benigni to replace Peter Sellers in the titular role. Benigni wasn't famous at the time and didn't grab people's attention like he would have done if this film was shot after Life is Beautiful (1997), which won Benigni two Oscars. Sadly Benigni didn't strike while the iron was hot when he had the chance and eventually tanked his opportunities in America for good with the monstrous bomb that was his re-imagining of Pinocchio. And yes that is as bad as it sounds. Benigni in 1993 was best known for his roles in a few small Jim Jarmusch movies. The general public didn't really see him as anything special, which is a real pity because Son of the Pink Panther is the best of the non-Sellers Clouseau movies. Admittedly there's not a lot of competition for that acclaim and perhaps my low expectations had something to do with it. But there are genuine laughs in Son of the Pink Panther although many of them (like the Chief of Police being on the phone and getting knocked out of the window) are recycled from better Peter Sellers' Clouseau movies.

The plot sees Jacques Gambrelli (Benigni) accidentally run into Dreyfuss (Herbert Lom, reprising the role once again) who discovers his identity from Gambrelli's mother Maria (Claudia Cardinale). You may remember Maria Gambrelli from a Shot in the Dark although she was played by Elke Sommer in that film. Cardinale appears as her second character in the Clouseau universe having played the princess of Lugash in the Pink Panther. Another noticeable switch is Harvey Korman not playing Auguste Balls. His absence helps tank the scene in Dr Balls' disguise shop, which is one of several scenes to fall flat. However Bert Kwouk does return as Cato offering the same service he gave Inspector Clouseau; random attacks. This allows him to repeat the refrigerator attack from Return. There's never a point where this is as good as any of the Peter Sellers Clouseau movies but Benigni is probably about as close as you'll get. His psychical timing and butchering of the English language are Sellers-esque. But that's the thing. Unlike Steve Martin, who sought to re-invent the role, Benigni is just a copycat albeit a good one. The plot is somewhat rushed and not helped terribly by poor acting all around from just about everyone that isn't Benigni. Debrah Farentino is smoking hot as a kidnapped princess but the scenes between her and Benigni are hurried along so we can get to the next pratfall (although that's not even a complaint). Robert Davi plays the bad guy but he rarely shows any of his trademark qualities and his comedy acting near the end is embarassing. But despite all it's flaws Robert Benigni really gives it his all as Clouseau's son and this might even have worked if the public weren't so firmly opposed to anyone but Peter Sellers playing Clouseau. That said Steve Martin's version made plenty of money.

BEST BIT – Bobby McFerrin's voice only version of the Pink Panther theme.



The Pink Panther (2006)



Director here is hardly Blake Edwards, its Shawn Levy who did Just Married and Cheaper By The Dozen. This is Steve Martin's pet project and he went out of his way to write and star in it somewhat changing the original concept of the film starring Chris Tucker ("you crazy Dreyfuss!") and being helmed by Ivan Reitman. Somehow I think this might be better. In this film Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) decides to bring in the most inept policeman in all of France to head an investigation to find the missing Pink Panther diamond and discover who murdered French soccer coach Yves (Jason Statham in a SERIOUS stretch). For this he brings in Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Steve Martin) and gives him an assistant in Gilbert (Jean Reno). No Kato and only Beyonce Knowles in terms of femme fatale.

If there had never been a Peter Sellers "Pink Panther" series of films this still wouldn't be very good. But with the increased expectation due to the towering and comedic genius of Sellers, this film has a lot to live up to. Steve Martin really has no chance right from the get go because he's not a very psychical actor. Sellers psychical comedy was amazing and possibly his best trait, which is saying something considering how funny he was without psychical comedy. Martin does ok with the general bumbling of Clouseau but he's so far behind what Sellers was capable of that this is never as funny as it would be with a more capable psychical comedian in the lead role. And I like Steve Martin. I count "The Jerk" amongst my most watched and favourite films. I think he can, when he really pushes himself, be a hilarious comedian. Unfortunately he hasn't got the range to do Clouseau. The accent stuff is never as funny as Sellers either. Mispronouncing "bomb" as "burm" is relatively amusing. Mispronouncing "hamburger" as whatever Martin was saying just isn't funny. It's a pity that so many of the jokes miss because there were legitimately funny moments in Pink Panther. I'm just pushed to remember any of them. Instead I keep getting flashbacks to Sellers performance, which is the one Martin is trying to measure up to. And he can't possibly do that. So the big question is; why did they even bother trying? Especially with a frankly staggering budget of $80M (yes, you read that correctly). Its 10 week cinematic run just about pushed it up over that but I would seriously question anyone who actually paid to see this. In fact it's been such a success that a sequel is in the works. A sequel that will be the 11th film based around the antics of Inspector Clouseau. Sellers starred in only five of those. Amazing to think how many extras have been tacked on over the years. At least this one didn't star Joanna Lumley.

BEST BIT – The running gag with the globe (a tip of the hat to the globe in the first film) and the cyclist, which is pretty well executed and the best psychical comedy in the film. Shame Martin wasn't capable of that level of performance himself.

RATINGS –

The Pink Panther ****
A Shot in the Dark ****1/2
Inspector Clouseau **
Return of the Pink Panther ****
The Pink Panther Strikes Again ****1/2
Revenge of the Pink Panther **1/2
Trail of the Pink Panther BOO!
Curse of the Pink Panther *1/2
Son of the Pink Panther **
The Pink Panther (06) *1/2

BOX OFFICE –

The Pink Panther $10.8M
A Shot in the Dark $12.6M
Inspector Clouseau ???
Return of the Pink Panther $17M
The Pink Panther Strikes Again $33.8M
Revenge of the Pink Panther $37.3M
Trail of the Pink Panther $6.9M
Curse of the Pink Panther $4.4M
Son of the Pink Panther $2.4M
The Pink Panther (06) $82.2M

The 411 –

Inspector Clouseau was a classic character defined by a series of wonderful turns in the role by Peter Sellers. After Sellers' unfortunate passing in 1980 Blake Edwards insisted on attempting to carry on with the series and produced a string of poor immitations. As a rule if Peter Sellers is in it and was alive at the time of shooting then it's a good Pink Panther movie. Although Revenge is debateble. My personal favourite remains Pink Panther Strikes Again, which features some of the best set pieces and Herbert Lom at his level best.