The Pink Panther, No. 11 - The Pink Panther 2 (2009)

By the time the sequel to a remake comes about, chances are the “new” property has successfully distinguished itself from the originals. That is, unless the remake’s sequel is a remake of the sequel to the original which was itself remade – see? Otherwise, it’s an opportunity for a entirely distinct continuity, emphasizing things differently than before.

So it is with The Pink Panther 2 – the only time this franchise has succumbed to the non-decision of a numbered title. The second Pink Panther, as opposed to the first Pink Panther, the second Pink Panther to which The Pink Panther 2 is its second…okay, the Steve Martin movie from 2006. Audiences then were all too happy to compare Martin’s portrayal of Inspector Clouseau to the immortal Peter Sellers, despite Martin’s best efforts to distinguish himself through new interpretations of old gags. The Pink Panther 2 embraces Clouseau as Martin has made him, and does something which is very distinctly a sequel to The Pink Panther ’06 edition.

Some of that film’s central new gags get reworked and massaged in the 2009 sequel, and some of the unusual structure of the ’06 Panther is also repeated, with minor variations. Of course, Martin’s Clouseau remains as he was previously, a monumentally klutzy French police officer with legitimate detection skills. In fact, Martin highlights the specific vices and virtues of the new Clouseau. On the bad side, he is a jerkass, egotistical, racist, sexist, is this actually meant as a parody of something? On the good side, this Clouseau is smart and has emotions, affording the attempt for legitimate drama. This is a bizarre combination, and the Martin version is more complex, and thus less successful (though not bad).


The Pink Panther 2 opens with the crime spree of a sophisticated gentleman jewel thief, the Phant- no, wait, the Tornado. This is how they can maintain an Edwards-style movie without directly conjuring up Sir Charles Lytton, and all the baggage attached to him.

Anyway, stolen: the Magna Karta, the Shroud of Turin, the Imperial Sword. A Dream Team of elite international detectives is being assembled in response. On top of the victimized nations of England, Italy and Japan, France is also fronting a detective, because in the Pink Panther world, France is the center of the universe (same thing France itself believes). Representing the Gauls, as though you could not guess this…Clouseau!

Clouseau’s superior Inspector Dreyfus does not like this, and yet…and yet Dreyfus takes it all in relative stride, never really serving as the chief butt of Clouseau’s antics. And I must mention, Dreyfus is no longer played by Kevin Kline, but now by John Cleese. (Should a Pink Panther 3 come about, I anticipate either Michael Palin or Jamie Lee Curtis, maintaining this Fish Called Wanda connection.) Naturally, Cleese is a remarkably funny man (see the aforementioned farce, as well as Monty Python and “Fawlty Towers”), yet he does very little in The Pink Panther 2. That’s no surprise, though, as Cleese’s recent work showcases more Rat Races and fewer Holy Grails.


Reducing Dreyfus’ victimization is one way in which the new, post-Edwardsian Pink Panther is different from its predecessors. Frankly, these remakes have little use for the man. In 2, at least, that’s because there are many high-toned and serious lawmen more readily available to receive Clouseau’s chicanery…

Joining Clouseau with the world’s finest minds is an inspired idea, and one grows gleeful to imagine how Blake Edwards might’ve used such a notion to fashion a grand pastiche of other detective fiction forms…sort of like a Murder By Death, in fact, which also featured Sellers (as a racist caricature). But the Dream Team does not serve that purpose, as they are simply here to be the straight men against Clouseau.


Let’s see, serving England is Inspector Randall Pepperidge – played by Alfred Molina, of Spider-Man 2 and Raiders of the Lost Ark (yup, he’s in that). In other words, an immensely talented thespian.

From Italy, there is Vicenzo Brancaleone – Andy Garcia, of The Untouchables, Ocean’s Eleven, the good thing about The Godfather: Part III. Another very strong actor, known for his commanding tough guy roles.

Japan fronts Kenju Mazutu – Yuki Matsuzaki, of…actually not much else. Oh well, two outa three ain’t bad.

The point I’m getting at here is these’re mostly some powerhouse performers. It is not unexpected then that such dramatists aren’t best served playing 5th, 6th and 7th bananas in a slapstick comedy aimed at the kiddies. They’re quite decent in their roles, surely, but…Okay, these guys, John Cleese, more to come…? The Pink Panther 2’s cast is ridiculously overqualified, which paradoxically makes the film look worse than it might without ‘em.

As a sequel, 2 is overstuffed with characters, which it must juggle with great care in the same way as Martin does countless wine bottles – in a restaurant destruction scene which is in isolation a wonderful example of Martin’s physical comedy. Taking screen time away from the aforementioned thespians are certain returning members of the new millennium Panther pack: Like Jean Reno as “almost-Cato” Gilbert Ponton…

The old “Cato beats up Clouseau” gag was already diluted, but at least Martin (who wrote this movie too, let us now know) finds an unexplored outlet for something similar: Ponton’s sons take the Cato-esque role in Reno’s stead, for an extended assault upon the beloved bumbler. This isolated scene is a far less graceful example of slapstick, and a point in the film’s disfavor. Otherwise, Reno exists to fuel a non-starting subplot concerning his own wife, there mostly to justify having France’s biggest badass on board.

Actually, there’s another reason for this wife plot. It parallels Clouseau’s own love story, with his long-suffering secretary Nicole Durant (returning Emily Mortimer). Herein is The Pink Panther 2’s primary dramatic thread, to document the rise, fall and rise of the Clouseau/Nicole relationship. It still seems weird to treat Clouseau with such seriousness, surely a sop to satisfy the less anarchically-minded Hollywood producers.

The plot is nothing unique – it ostensibly concerns the hunt for the Tornado, for as little as I’ve said about that. The romance is equally standard, in that each partner is tempted away by an outside force. In Nicole’s case, that’d be Vicenzorancananonilioneicconei…er, Andy Garcia! Which lets him play his “Italian seducer” schtick whilst Alfred Molina stands unused on the sidelines.

In Clouseau’s case, his temptation comes from –


Well, she’s no Claudia Cardinale. However, Aishwarya Rai [Bachchan] (playing Sonia Solandres) is the most beautiful woman in all of Bollywood, here attempting a crossover away from films like Devdas and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. As I cannot name another English language film of Rai’s without reference to Wikipedia, I shall remain silent as to how successful that attempt has been.

The late introduction of Sonia Solandres as a non-national member of the Dream Team sends up red flags – at least, to a viewer seasoned by mysteries. She’s here as the best-selling author about the Tornado – more red flags! Her intro even occurs right around the same time that the Pink Panther has been stolen, so…

Ah, you know it couldn’t be a Pink Panther without the Pink Panther, now the highly-prized symbol of all of France, rather than simply Jason Stratham’s personal jewelry – such inter-entry discontinuity is exceedingly familiar in this franchise. It too is missing, Clouseau has a further cause in his investigation, and…Wait, wait, I was about to say something in regards to Clouseau’s nascent intelligence, but I’ll do as the film and save that for the end.

The Dream Team follows their leads from one set piece to another, meaning a chance for the film to invent random bits of silliness. Excuse plots are the Pink Panther bread and butter, always have been. In this endeavor, new director Harald Zwart is no Blake Edwards (Zwart’s best film to date is the Karate Kid remake), but neither is he a Shawn Levy. He’s far better than Shawn Levy, in that Zwart has an actual sense for comedy. He even uses proscenium, which is very much in accord with the Edwards approach!

With such a helmer, we can expect a few clever notions. One occurs when the Dream Team is off visiting Alonso Avellaneda (Jeromy Irons – See? Wasted cast!). Clouseau sneaks about as we remain with the others; his caperings appear on the security monitors, silent and in black & white. Shenanigans ensue. I’m astounded, someone actually found a natural way to communicate the language of silent comic cinema in 2009, which is the sort of formalist approach Edwards would envy.


Another noteworthy set piece concerns Clouseau attempting to move a recording device from one restaurant table to another – without being seen. This allows Martin to utilize the sort of disguise-based silliness Sellers enjoyed. He clads as a Spanish dancer, launches into a too-silly pratfall routine, things climax in flames. What separates this scene from so many like it is a degree of clarity to the gag. So many would flail through such an extreme, abstract setup, whereas Martin breaks the routine down into its separate moments, then plays each beat distinctly.

Not all routines are as successful, which is the risk you run with such a scattershot construction. Clouseau’s struggle with Ponton’s sons is one of those moments, as it trades thought-out lunacy for simple viciousness. Another more awkward moment, for other reasons, comes of the Dream Team’s visit to the Pope’s chambers – necessitated since now his ring has been added to the Tornado’s stash (hey, you did Italy twice!). This is one of those extremely delicate, cultured social situations, so it shouldn’t take an excessive amount of bungling on Clouseau’s part.


Yeah, that’s what he does, dress himself in the Pope’s finest popery, then do a joke which wasn’t funny in EuroTrip either. It’s one thing to put Cloueau in physical bits of nonsense, but this scene demands that we accept a certain extreme degree of stupidity on Clouseau’s part. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except for the amount of smartness we’re also asked to ascribe to him, which is the great Catch 22 of Martin’s version.

But Clouseau’s competence is not in question for long, especially when he managed to tumble off of the Pope’s balcony, when that frail Voice of God has himself never managed to do likewise. The international media is unanimous in its assessment.


Blake Edwards would have never exposed Clouseau’s clumsiness to the world like this, for one of his films’ great gags was how no one except Dreyfus saw Clouseau’s faults. It is this self-awareness in the new Clouseau which makes the humor somewhat less successful than before – it isn’t as committed to following a premise through to the end credits, sans drama. But following the ’06 Panther prototype slavishly, 2 sends Clouseau into the doldrums at the start of its Third Act, exacerbating his success with both Nicole and the Dream Team. Such drama feels an odd fit after what’s preceded it.

True to form, Clouseau then gets his “Ah-hah!” moment, which allows him to crack the case and best the best. He identifies the real perpetrator (red flag-related SPOILER: it was Rai), even while the Dream Team has misidentified a dead man as the culprit and is taking all the credit.

They come to this conclusion earlier, which allows The Pink Panther 2 to climax at an absurdly posh French soiree, same as last time – in true Naked Gun fashion. Clouseau breaks into the gala event, fingers Rai (so to speak), let the wackiness commence. Purely in relationship to its immediate predecessor, 2 is superior in its handling of this moment, even if it is a repeat. This comes of a much more elaborate examination of the comic possibilities of this setting. Martin shows himself to be a student of the Three Stooges, even while Edwards seemed a Buster Keaton man: the three “serious” members of the Dream Team join Clouseau in the Rai race, themselves achieving the maximum amount of foolishness. And Clouseau – again, using genuine pre-meditated smarts – nabs the thief and saves the day.

And he marries Nicole, which leaves them in an odd place for a sequel, should one ever occur.


In this summary, I totally forgot to mention the cleverest scenes in the whole thing! That’s because they have nothing to do with anything else. Rather, in an attempt to elaborate upon the style of the “hamburger” joke from before, Clouseau is saddled with a consultant to advice him in political correctness. (See comment far above about Clouseau’s racism/sexism/general assholism.) That’d be Lily Tomlin, the real life Edna Mode herself, as Yvette Berenger. Not only does this repeating gag allow for far more slurs than I ever expected in a contemporary PG movie, it even grants Clouseau his old “Little yellow friend” comment in new context.

So it ultimately stands that the comedy in The Pink Panther 2 is better than it was in The Pink Panther – though by a minute enough degree it might not be noticeable with more time between viewings. Oh, and the mystery element is better plotted too! Despite all this, The Pink Panther 2 couldn’t even make a third of its forebear’s gross, topping out at a mere $40 million (not that I’d complain to get such a sum myself). It is pretty unusual for the first sequel to a successful, popular movie to sink so much; first sequels usually do better theatrically, owing to love for the first. But we forget that The Pink Panther was a remake, and thus it got a big bump in attendance owing to that fact. So the success of The Pink Panther 2 is more a reflection of this property’s value today, when it isn’t in the extraordinary position of being a remake.

This downturn renders the possibility of future Panthers in the Martin vein rather unlikely. One challenge, should they attempt more, would be to reassemble this overwhelming cast (even ignoring the Dream Team members). In the modern age, with sequels occurring only every 2 or 3 years, casts have a tendency to inflate wildly – this is true of many contemporary franchises. Witness X-Men, Meet the Parents, whatever. Edwards’ Pink Panthers avoided that issue, and the general malaise of sequel escalation, by delivering stand alone entries much in the Bondian mold. This new Pink Panther doesn’t seem to share that aim, which, as much as anything else, should keep away further sequels.

Case closed.


Related posts:
• No. 1 The Pink Panther (1963)
• No. 2 A Shot in the Dark (1964)
• No. 3 Inspector Clouseau (1968)
• No. 4 The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
• No. 5 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
• No. 6 Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
• No. 7 Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
• No. 8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
• No. 9 Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
• No. 10 The Pink Panther (2006)

The Pink Panther, No. 9 - Son of the Pink Panther (1993)

(Universal rules apply: Titularly, we’ve gone from pastiching The Mummy’s Curse to pastiching Son of Frankenstein. Qualitatively, though, no such uptick.)

Blake Edwards worked for nearly half a century, writing and directing a fascinating body of films, forever exploring his particular brand of humor even when it seemed to stagnate somewhat in the later years of the 1980s. Indeed, 50 years of making jokes would take it out of anyone, so it’s hard to fault Edwards for losing the vitality of youth as newer funnymen flooded the market. In such a light, what would one expect of his final film? A grand masterwork summing up his career, or a simple and unassuming footnote? If you’re Edwards, you’ll use your swansong to make a final statement in your single most lasting achievement – the Pink Panther franchise.

At least, that’s how I choose to interpret 1993’s Son of the Pink Panther. Common wisdom holds that this was rather an attempt to jumpstart the long-dead franchise, to again do as Curse and propose a new lead to carry on in the spirit of an MIA Inspector Clouseau. If that was the case, then Edwards truly meant “Son” in the title, for the strong role his own son George enjoys in the behind-the-scenes work. (Not to mention Edwards’ daughter Jennifer acts in a largish role.)

Reading Son as the final work of an auteur who knows his best years are behind him is the easiest way to handle how…lackluster, timid, disengaging the result is. Let’s say Edwards had a few unused gags in his notebook, and the need to get them off his chest pre-retirement. For really, if they did intend more Pink Panthers using Son as a franchise-igniting instant classic, surely more effort would’ve gone into it. …And I am growing so very tired of finding new ways to say “unfunny pratfalls delivered without conviction.”


At least the casting of the Sellers successor sounds, er, sound…on paper, maybe. Roberto Benigni is the funniest Italian since Mussolini, a self-made student of the silent comedy tradition in an increasingly modernized cinema. This is a man a mere 5 years out from his Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful, making him the second Panther lead to win such an award – and Sellers somehow ain’t one of ‘em! Flashing back to a time before his person-climbing shenanigans (and [shudder!] Pinocchio), Benigni was an unknown internationally. Son was to correct that, in the sense that The Cannonball Run II made Jackie Chan a ginormous worldwide superstar – that is, not at all.

The positives Benigni brings to the Panther Pack: a fully-developed comic persona all his own, not infringing upon Sellers. This is overwhelmed by one sizable, glaring negative: Roberto Benigni does not speak English. As a solution, they could make his Jacques Gambrelli – who is the bastard child of Clouseau, and more on that later – a truly silent buffoon, like Dopey in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs…you know, take advantage of your star’s linguistic incapacities, like Scharzenegger in The Terminator. Rather, Edwards had Benigni memorize his English lines pho-ne-ti-cal-ly. Even with very few lines, the result is a lot of incomprehensible mumbling, garbled gibberish which should be understandable in context, but isn’t. Covering for that, Edwards often scripts it so Benigni’s Jacques is drunk, or high on ether, or eating peanut butter (okay, no peanut butter), or otherwise excuses things lazily. Oh, and all the other actors mumble a little too, to draw attention away from it. Great, now it’s a whole film I cannot understand!

Even with that speechified handicap, Benigni is a capable enough comic performer – witness his own Italian fare, Il piccolo diavolo and Johnny Stecchino – Hell, see his previous American work with Jim Jaramusch, like Down by Law! The point is, the man knew his stuff. Thus it is hard to account for how ludicrously unable he is to inject any levity into Son, delivering an inaccessible, buffoonish caricature only slightly better than the crap Ted Wass vomited out in Curse. Sad as it is to say, I fear the blame lies on Edwards, whose sense of comedic play was rapidly receding.


Not to mention Son’s status as a Pink Panther sequel means lots of continuity added wherever Edwards sees fit. Not only are jokes repeated (though at least no one is shat upon by a bird for once), but “new” jokes demand that you recall jokes from before to work – sometimes from 30 years before! Naturally, Herbert Lom and Burt Kwouk return yet again as Dreyfus and Cato, respectively, in the eternal struggle to convince us things are the same as ever. They have not aged gracefully.

Even more damning, the spirit of Inspector Clouseau looms over everything, even if the closest we come to seeing him is a memorial statue in a park. Rarely have I seen a franchise dwell upon a long-missing character so strongly, making Son of the Pink Panther the Saw VI of comedy. A little of this comes from old Clouseauisms in Jacques – and it is a surreal thing to see an Italian attempt a French accent in English, rendering “room” as “rieueueum” rather “a-rooooooom-a.” It is mostly at Dreyfus’ insistence that these Clouseauian connections are made, as the man who benefits most from Clouseau’s absence is the one intent upon keeping his memory alive! At least Dreyfus doesn’t attempt to off the hero in this one; rather, he merely takes the fullest brunt of a standard survivable bomb blast, and goes to the hospital. We spend way too long there in his immobile presence, end of story.


Anyway, “the bastard son of Jacques Clouseau,” that needs some explanation. Recall back to 1964, to A Shot in the Dark…Clouseau enjoyed a torrid, French love affair with the Italian maid Maria Gambrelli, hence the stooge. But it’s not so simple, not in Edwards’ world. Rather than bringing back Elke Sommer, for whatever inscrutable reason, Edwards has cast Claudia Cardinale from the original Pink Panther to play Maria – which just confuses matters, as she’d played Princess Dala there. (Speaking of people who have aged with inestimable grace, Claudia Cardinale circa 1993…still mmm…)

Recasting is an oddly common phenomenon in The Pink Panther, and often we’re expected to recognize a generic name (i.e. Maria) and connect it back to something from the ‘60s. Consider the coming and going of David Niven, or how Graham Stark and Harvey Korman share the role of Auguste Balls at random (today it is Stark).


Anyway…Oh, plot, yes, plot! There must be a half-arsed excuse for Jacques to pratfall hither and yon. Again Edwards had no better idea than to summon up the fictional nation of Lugash, though at least this time that stinkin’ Pink Panther diamond is nowhere to be seen. Instead, today’s plot-driving MacGuffin is Princess Yasmin herself (Debrah Farentino, a randomly attractive Italian girl – not hard to find). Well, that consolidates plot mechanics and love interests, so that’s efficiency of a sort.


The overall tone of Son is one of a low budget James Bond film. Not so special, you say, several of the Pink Panthers have done likewise – what with their exoticism and savoir faire and even Dreyfus/Balls/Cato being a variation on M/Q/Moneypenny. That’s to say nothing of Roger Moore’s eventual intrusion. Well, it’s more so with Son. More than ever this one apes the patterns of a spy action film, even bringing in commandos for a bunch of surprisingly violent shootouts – Son boasts a rather largish non-comic bodycount. Worse yet, it’s not a vintage Bond movie (see Austin Powers, a Panther-esque clone), but one of those more anonymous ‘80s Bond efforts. Really, did the world need a pastiche of The Living Daylights?!

I cite that one for the film’s eventual focus upon desert-bound Lugash, for as much as in Edwards’ mind Middle East = Afghanistan = Morocco = India, probably. I may as well have cited the other Dalton entry, Licence to Kill, seeing as its villain, Robert Davi, plays the villain here: a terrorist named Hans. Not Gruber, simply Hans. Weak. As a kidnapper and extortionist, Davi’s Hans has nothing on his Franz Sanchez, or his Agent Johnson, or – Hey! What I wouldn’t give for a Panther-style movie in the Die Hard mould! And no, I don’t mean Paul Blart: Mall Cop…Am I getting distracted here? Yes.

And – Holy shnikeys, did I just see Grace Jones run past the camera?! Ye gods, methinks I did! Let’s add A View To a Kill to the Bond market.


Yes, they just can’t leave that hospital set alone.

The plot gets complicated, as it does any time Lugash is involved, because Lugash is Edwards’ excuse to go hog wild on the foreign policy intrigue. See why the series insists upon a fictional nation? Such matters are usually too complex to be worth following – it all boils down to good guys and bad guys – not that I could follow it anyway, what with all the mumbled dialogue.

Not that any of this matters in the end. We’re here to see a moron prat about, presumably, as well as for the final nostalgic visit with our friends Dreyfus and Cato (hence they get something resembling the retrospective treatment). It occurs only now that it’s an odd comic proposition to spend 2 hours laughing at a man with obvious mental and social deficiencies. We’re talking a stilted man-child, a functional illiterate – this is supposed to be funny? Oh…wait…Princess Yasmin fares no better, as the film chalks up her inevitable romance with Jacques to Stockholm Syndrome. (“Bienvenido, Princepesa” indeed!) Oh yes, ignoring the omnipresent racial issues on hand in regards to Asians (Cato gets off easy), Arabs and even Jews (see Jacques’ disguise below), even the main characters are treated…iffily.


Anyway, we’re here for the slapstick. Does Son deliver? Well, look back upon my Shot in the Dark consideration, which capped with a hugely abridged listing of Clouseau’s pratfalls – to say nothing of the many, many other jokes on hand. I shall proceed here with a similar accounting of Jacques’ prat parts, a complete listing, and we’ll see how poorly Son measures up to its old man. Keep in mind, these are the only jokes…

- Jacques falls off a bicycle, over a van.
- Jacques parks his bicycle in wet cement, then walks through it.
- Hitmen try offing Jacques, and he falls in the harbor (repeat from older films).
- A dog humps Dreyfus’ leg. (Wait…That’s not Jacques!)
- Like Sellers in Being There, Jacques imitates what he sees on TV: The Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races.
- Drunk, Jacques pretends as a doctor, has sex.
- Jacques falls out of a van (repeat).
- Jacques knocks a man out of a window (repeat).
- Cato attacks Jacques (repeat)…for 10 seconds.
- Jacques cannot use chopsticks.
- Jacques infiltrates a bar in a ridiculous costume (repeat).
- Cato is in the refrigerator (repeat).
- Lengthy battle against Hans, complete with head-clonking.
- Jacques bungles a medal ceremony (repeat).
- Also, this:

Well, that’s it. That’s all the humor. It’d take more time listing the jokes in No Country For Old Men – seriously. And to all this I must again say…Yeah, if it was meant as a belated farewell to the franchise, a bowing out for Dreyfus and Cato (and Balls), then it’s OK. It’s hard to credit anyone with the notion that Benigni, as he appears here, could headline further misadventures. But comedy is a niggling thing. In Italy, Son of the Pink Panther was a substantial hit, whereas it was decidedly not that anyplace else. Credit the Italians’ love for their favorite balding, chinless, turkey-necked cretin, and perhaps a successful dubbing. Or a nationwide insanity, like France’s love for Jerry Lewis – yeah, it’s 2011, and I’m insisting upon the Jerry Lewis stereotype.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot! (More accurately, I did forget.) Dreyfus marries Maria at Son down. This caps countless boring, mumbled minutes spent on their chats. It’s odd, though, to think Dreyfus would knowingly allow a Clouseau, any Clouseau, become his in-law, even in exchange for the lovely Claudia Cardinale. At east it gives Dreyfus resolution, closure.

Whatever, The Pink Panther was dead before Son of the Pink Panther, it was equally dead after Son of the Pink Panther; little changed from this effort. Blake Edwards went into a long retirement, relaxing for 17 years before his passing in 2010. And while his last three Pink Panthers were all unnatural extensions of a series which did not need it, they can do nothing to sully the good, careful humor of the Peter Sellers years. So let us not dwell upon how things turned out, but where things began – and credit The Pink Panther for keeping silent comedy alive.


Related posts:
• No. 1 The Pink Panther (1963)
• No. 2 A Shot in the Dark (1964)
• No. 3 Inspector Clouseau (1968)
• No. 4 The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
• No. 5 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
• No. 6 Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
• No. 7 Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
• No. 8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
• No. 10 The Pink Panther (2006)
• No. 11 The Pink Panther (2009)

The Pink Panther, No. 10 - The Pink Panther (2006)

Let us assume it is the new millennium, and for whatever reason you’ve decided to profligate the Pink Panther series. Let us not probe why, or if it is a good idea; let us simply ponder how. Thrice we’ve seen that Pink Panther movies simply do not work without Peter Sellers starring (we even have an example against grave robbing, in case you were wondering). Furthermore, Blake Edwards’ continuity was all violently massaged with unheeded sequels, and would be a remarkably difficult thing to build upon.

Lucky for us you’re living in the reboot-, remake-happy ‘00s, when you can announce continuity abandonment, go ahead with recasting, and no one presses the logic of it. So the 2006 Pink Panther arrives in the guise of a remake, though it surely isn’t a remake of The Pink Panther itself – but that’s the title audiences will respond to. Rather, it is a franchise remake, in that this Pink Panther is “based on the Pink Panther films of Blake Edwards” writ large. It adapts the form of The Pink Panther, not the specifics of any one entry. Let us further hope for your project that an 84-year-old Edwards is too senile to take offence to what’s going on.


In comes Steve Martin, both writing and also starring as Inspector Clouseau. Kevin Kline is Charles Dreyfus. Anyone else feel like they ought to switch roles? I mean, Edwards did briefly consider Kline for Clouseau immediately around A Fish Called Wanda, which would’ve made him the third Oscar winner in the role.

Start again. In comes Steve Martin, on paper a promising Panther prospect given his healthy comedy career – Grammy-winning comedy albums, then The Jerk, All of Me, Little Shop of Horrors, Planes, Trains & Automobiles. What do you notice about all those things? Yeah, they date from the ‘80s, or even earlier! Like so many similarly talented comic minds ([cough!] Eddie Murphy [cough!]), Martin lost his controversial, absurdist edge around the time he took on a family. That is the lamentable neutered tradition The Pink Panther ’06 version finds itself in, aiming more decidedly for the family market than any Panther prior – hence some of the smuttier material had to be excised, banished to the DVD deleted scenes (so no Trail for this Panther).

No matter, Martin is still a sharp enough tool to understand his Clouseau cannot be exactly like Sellers’, that he must walk a fine line trading off memory of the old films whilst forging new material out of old conceits. In its way, this is the best thing to happen to the franchise since 1980, for with Edwards gone, a fresh voice can treat the material with vigor and verve. And for as stupid as The Pink Panther turns out, it’s at least intellectually stimulating (is that right?) to see effort put into these jokes again. It still isn’t especially funny, somehow, for complex reasons of tone and delivery I shan’t delve into for lack of competency, but it’s more than the last three entries combined.


While Clouseau remains a bumbling French inspector, there are differences taken advantage of. He now hails from a small village, where he enjoys a history of grotesque idiocy. Promoted (by Dreyfus, for reasons we’ll get to) to the Sûreté, Clouseau develops, well, quite the ego. While Martin understands the central lesson of the old films, that Clouseau does not act the fool even though he is the fool, Martin rather overemphasizes that trait. His Clouseau gloats in a much haughtier (and dare I say, French) manner than Sellers’ version ever did. Consider Clouseau’s rejection of American cuisine, which in a post-9/11 flick feels as though it should be a satire. It is not, due to this film’s family friendly spinelessness, instead rendering France a land of silly frogs for the kiddies to bray at. Ah, America.

Clouseau’s physical incompetency remains (it’s the one trait they remembered keeping in the later Edwards efforts), though it no longer concerns simply Clouseau and Dreyfus. Now the main victim is…the general public itself. Yeah, Clouseau the cop misunderstands public safety so egregiously, he causes what could arguably be construed as deaths (in the Final Destination mode) if we stuck around long enough to learn the outcome of injuries sustained by poor passersby. Clouseau remains as unaware as ever, but in a crueler way.

All of this makes Martin’s Clouseau a lot less likable than Sellers – and it’s Sellers’ likability which propelled Clouseau from costar to leading man in A Shot in the Dark. This doesn’t have to be a problem, as many a cynical comedy has been made of a jerkass hero. The problem is this Pink Panther wants it both ways. As a family film – nay, a big-budget, Hollywood family film complete with standard script formulae – The Pink Panther must provide Clouseau with an actual dramatic arc, giving us 80% of a movie filled with wild and crazy pratfalls, only to celebrate their perpetrator with a completely straight face.

Clouseau even gets that Third Act “lowest ebb” moment all hack writers simply prattle on and on about. Even though the humor is the best-constructed we’ve seen since Revenge of the Pink Panther, this makes the 2006 Pink Panther somehow feel the most generic of the pack.

Okay, let’s just credit that to artless director Shawn Levy, who shows as much skill in creating mass market success as he does flat and inoffensive mediocrities. Cheaper By the Dozen shows Levy humbling Martin even earlier; Ben Stiller didn’t need much help debasing himself for Night at the Museum, but it takes talent to make Steve Carrell and Tina Fey unfunny at once (Date Night).


With Clouseau given dramatic focus for once, the plot is possibly of greater consequence than is normal for this franchise – And a question: Do remakes count towards a franchise? I think so, but who’s to say.

The case today is one of murder [da dum dum!]. The victim is Yves Gluant (Jason Statham, Frenchman?!), coach of the French national soccer – excuse me, football – team. Presumably this happens at a World Cup game – maybe the 1998 World Cup that was held in France. It’s the semifinals, and France has just beaten China f- Never mind, their 1998 semifinal opponent was Croatia. Nah, this is just fiction! Anyway, Gluant gets a poison dart to his neck. And to justify the title – ‘cause it’s too soon in an ostensibly rebooted franchise to go about assuming “Pink Panther” means nothing – his Pink Panther diamond ring finger is missing. Gasp and awe!

Apart from the Panther’s existence, we learn nothing of it. Unlike Edwards’ inexplicable fixation with this rock, its 2006 usefulness is slight – seeing as most people are more concerned with the dead soccer hooligan. The diamond thing does at least justify a later subplot with Gruant’s girlfriend, Xania (Beyoncé Knowles, who has a habit of appearing in bad sequels about bumbling detectives). Xania is an American pop singer, which must’ve been a real stretch for Beyoncé and – Okay, enough sarcasm, let us simply respect the series for continuing to cast astoundingly beautiful women even if their parts are unimpressive. Er, their movie parts, that is.


Dreyfus wishes to solve the case, as it is his lifelong dream to win France’s Medal of Honor (or Médaille d’honneur). But “because of the media” he cannot just go and do that…apparently. Rather, Dreyfus seeks out the greatest imbecile in all of France – that’d be Clouseau – and assigns him to the case. Meanwhile, Dreyfus shall secretly investigate as – Okay, look, why not just take the case yourself? The media is never shown creating a problem for Clouseau’s investigation. Kline’s Dreyfus brought this upon himself, for doofy reasons, and his comeuppance (not even a single murder or eye twitch to his name this time) is thus his own fault.

No matter, Clouseau is on the case, with his assistant Cat- No, no, the Cato character is racist. Rather, in order to avoid cries of prejudice and to cast another white guy, Clousau’s partner in crime-solving is Gilbert Ponton (Jean Reno, because one doesn’t invoke France nowadays without Jean Reno). He’s here on Dreyfus’ orders, to curtail Clouseau’s idiocy as much – no, as little – as possible. As a bizarre reversal on the old Clouseau-Cato dynamic, here Clouseau announces he shall attack Ponton at irregular intervals, for Ponton’s benefit. It’s the same basic setup, but with even more foolishness heaped into Clouseau’s court. As running gags go, this one is mostly forgotten about – or it never registers as strongly, since their battles never last all that long.

Clouseau’s investigation mostly involves finding and interviewing an assortment of individuals connected to Gluant. Each interview is pretty much self-contained, a chance for isolated shenanigans. The movie’s success then depends upon the majority of these being amusing, which…which I suppose they are. There’s a little too much dependency upon the format of The Naked Gun. A recording booth affords a flatulence variation on that film’s classic urine-and-microphone gag. There’s also a scene where Clouseau interviews a businessman, destroys all his priceless antiques (comedy and valuables do not mix), even gets attacked by the aquarium fish. And a fountain pen gets destroyed at some point.

But at least this Pink Panther never burgles from that other famous post-Panther parody, Austin Powers (I mean, apart from borrowing Beyoncé). After the weird Bondian fixation of Son of the Pink Panther, it’s nice to see one such tale of ineptitude leave that British superspy alone.


Oh DAMN IT!

Hmm, it’s 2006, and Clive Owen has just lost his bid to replace Pierce Brosnan as Bond. Instead he makes an “in-joke” about it in The Pink Panther, as Nigel Boswell Agent 006. “You’re one short” – Oh I get it! See what you missed out on, Bond producers? Huh?!

…Actually, this Bond pastiche was put together with the dreaded Die Another Day the freshest memory. When The Pink Panther stands against the same year’s Casino Royale, all of its many, many Bondian touches (not limited to Owen) feel antiquated.

Ignoring points like this, of which I certainly make too big a deal, there are individual examples of comic cleverness on display – Pink Panther diamonds in the rough, as it were. Aiding Clouseau is his secretary Nicole (an improbably attractive Emily Mortimer), who brings out the bumblingiest bumbling Clouseau ever bumbled. These scenes progress, Clouseau winds up in physically…suggestive positions with Nicole, then someone else (often Ponton) wanders in to admire the predicament. This is where the PG-rating does them a disservice, as the gag could’ve reached much more inspired heights twere it a tad risqué.


The other point in this Panther’s favor is the way it handles the franchise-long joke about Clouseau’s improbable French accent. (The eternal question remains: “Is he speaking French or English?”) Clouseau intends to go to America, mostly to hit on Beyoncé (oh, right, his Clouseau is hornier than Sellers’ too). To prepare, he meets with the world’s greatest voice coach, in order to eliminate his accent.

Now, while Martin never commits to specific pronunciations Sellers favored, he identifies new words to mangle. The greatest of these is “hamburger,” which gets delivered as “dhammbuehrghuertte.” And about 12 other ways. This leads to a multi-minute back-and-forth, a decent example of an intentionally pointless comic detour. It’s the film’s best scene, and it may be found here. You be the judge. Is it funny, or desperate and childish?

Not all the comedy works that well – the scenes more in Levy’s control, and less in Martin’s, are more concerned with being technically adequate than with being funny. When Blake Edwards was working at his best, the entirely of his Panthers bragged clever jokes. Edwards was himself a comedian, simply one most comfortable behind the camera. Levy is a mercenary journeyman. His jokes as presented are legible, which is a start, and would be perfectly amusing to a youth (who isn’t familiar with the greater world of comedy yet). But it seems the only trick Levy knows, apart from getting out of Martin’s way, is to irregularly humiliate Jean Reno. He should’ve just played clips from the American Godzilla. Consider Levy’s attempts:



It’s time to consider the climax, then go enjoy the rest of my day. As The Naked Gun and its ilk are the unacknowledged inspiration here, we must end at the most pretentious event possible, namely the President’s Ball. As per the dramatic story for Clouseau, this means a few things. One, there is an identifiable villain other than the murderer, and that villain is Dreyfus – not unusual, but different. He hopes to end the murder case this night same as Clouseau does, but Dreyfus intends to arrest someone different. The wrong person, in fact, because this is the kind of movie this is.

Meaning Clouseau will be correct when he identifies the killer. The plot can’t just resolve itself as in the Edwards examples, Clouseau as bumbling as ever. No, Clouseau must look competent, he must earn his victory – so say the strictures of the formulaic screenplay. This undercuts the premise of the entire franchise, and does a lot to quell the free-spirited zaniness from before. So Clouseau gets honored in the way Dreyfus wished to be, not due to a cruel twist of fate, but because he deserves to. This is screwy.

In the end, it seems the remake gambit was the proper one to play, along with a rejuvenated cast and crew. The Pink Panther boasted a very healthy gross, nearly $200 million – the highest in the franchise, owing partly to inflation. With time gone by, it suffered not a whit from the poor reputation of Edwards’ post-Sellers Panthers. Not that most people could even be bothered to recall Son of the Pink Panther, but by 2006 the Sellers efforts were all that still stood. Martin does a good job of delivering the Clouseau character without ever just aping Sellers – even if I find some of his snobbishness aggravating. The spirit of the former films is retained and altered, befitting a change in times and tone. It’s not the comedy classic its greatest forbears are. Still, this Pink Panther did what no other Sellers-less entry could: It firmly established a lead who could continue the franchise.


Related posts:
• No. 1 The Pink Panther (1963)
• No. 2 A Shot in the Dark (1964)
• No. 3 Inspector Clouseau (1968)
• No. 4 The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
• No. 5 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
• No. 6 Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
• No. 7 Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
• No. 8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
• No. 9 Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
• No. 11 The Pink Panther (2009)

The Pink Panther, No. 8 - Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)

Curse of the Pink Panther is the second concurrent Pink Panther sequel Blake Edwards put out following Peter Sellers’ death. It builds upon Trail of the Pink Panther, which is an immense problem because Curse asks that its audience retains memory (and affection) for a clip show, retrospective assembly which could hardly be called a feature length film. The same problem dogs this Panther (whose “Curse” title intentionally beggars comparison to the lesser Universal horror sequels). Edwards is desperate to somehow proliferate his once-great franchise, but without a single solid notion for how to do it.

Curse makes its weak and feeble argument by proposing a new character to fill in for Sellers’ MIA Inspector Clouseau, but we aren’t there yet. Instead, a little stage setting to get us up to speed: That same damn robbery of that same damn Pink Panther diamond opens Curse as it did Trail. Damn it.

Then comes an inexplicable little scene, complete with coldblooded murder, which won’t mean anything until the final 20 minutes.

And animated titles.

Then Curse simply trails Trail, down a listless and uninvolved groove where the members of the French Sûreté endlessly relay the fact that “Clouseau has vanished.” Yes, Clouseau has vanished, but repeating that fact over and over and over AND OVER does not effectively replace the gaping, Sellers-shaped hole he’s left. It’s all so much retread.


Pity poor Herbert Lom, who is again asked to stretch his Charles Dreyfus character thinner than ever, after The Pink Panther Strikes Again did all you could with the part. Because the French media is absolutely agog about Clouseau’s absence, even if Trail’s “star” Marie Jouvet never shows up, Dreyfus has been charged with finding a Clouseauian successor who shall find the missing moron. Oh yes, it’s all “meta” to talk about “replacements” when your movie is doing just that, but it ain’t as clever as Edwards thinks. It’s not the early days of cinema, after all, and filmic comedy had rather evolved beyond Edwards’ form – which has staled and slowed with the years.

Dreyfus, desperate to prevent Clouseau’s return at all costs (he hates the galling Gaulic goof), rigs the high-tech 1980s computer programmed to select a world-class detective. It seems the tact of Curse is that, rather than recasting the Clouseau role (for the most part…see later), it posits a new hero to carry the abandoned comedic brunt Clouseau once bore.

As this nouveau Clouseau redux, Edwards originally wanted Dudley Moore, having worked with him on 10 and some other movie. But Moore (er, this particular Moore) preferred to waste his time making an awful sequel to Arthur instead.

So Edwards proposed Rowan Atkinson, who was rejected for being unknown outside of England.

Instead they went with Ted Wass, who was unknown everywhere.


Wass is worthless in his role as NYPD Sergeant Clifton Sleigh, a man chosen by Dreyfus for being as totally klutzy as…well. But the man is a complete blank slate. Not only does he barely get a proper introduction, in the same sense that we never got to know Alan Arkin’s Clouseaux. It’s more that Wass does nothing whatsoever to differentiate his performance, to make it stand out, to be even remotely memorable. Oh sure, Clifton does bungle his way through a series of (poorly-staged) bungling slapstick set pieces, in an effort to maintain the same watered-down style of silent comedy the franchise was founded upon, but Clifton is not an interesting character.

Compared to the eccentric and oft-impenetrable French accent of Clouseau, Clifton merely employs a flat and baseline American voice. Okay, he is an American, but give us something. Whereas Clouseau approached all scenes with a false air towards sophistication, class, you name it, Clifton is endlessly reminded of his own incompetence. Hence we have an unsure and unappealing little turd, a policeman who is an ass and realizes it. Any potential comedy by way of contrast is thus assassinated in its sleep.

It’s surely unfair to directly compare Clifton against Clouseau, as he is not Clouseau, but ostensibly a “new” character. The problem is Curse so adamantly insists upon that reading. Clifton investigates the life of Clouseau, leading him through many of the same character bits from the latter third of Trail – not that they fare any better this time. All the series regulars – and I mean all of ‘em – keep on asking if Clifton is related to Clouseau, if Clouseau would have done the precise same pratfall Clifton just did, ad nauseum. You know, there’s a way to do a proper sequel while dramatizing your former star’s absence. It’s called The Godfather: Part II, and comparing Curse to that is even crueler than comparing Clifton to Clouseau.


There is little in terms of defining traits for Clifton. He wears glasses and something resembling a straw hat – Considering Edwards’ love of old silent slapstick, I’d call it the Harold Lloyd look (as opposed to Clouseau’s rather unique look that – Okay, I’ll stop!!!). Too bad Clifton’s favored baby blue suit merely makes him a grotesque, a figure of ridicule, never relatable as it seems he ought to be.

There’s some attempt at getting Clifton on our side, what with talk of his multi-generational family of New York police officers, a legacy he’s done nothing so far to live up to. This Clouseau case is his big chance. Now…if he succeeds, and brings Clouseau back to the Sûreté, well…the franchise isn’t gonna recast Clouseau that way, it isn’t. So Clifton is destined to fail, to Dreyfus’ likely glee (though Dreyfus does eventually try murdering Clifton, ‘cause that’s a tired joke that just will not die). The franchise demands such an outcome. Indeed, he does fail, ultimately delivering a false and baseless assumption about Clouseau’s death. This undercuts whatever “dramatic” effort had been made to let Clifton succeed.


It’s a shame this new character is so rancid – No, wait, “rancid” is not the right term. That implies anger on my part, or an emotion of some sort. No, Clifton (and Curse as a cursed whole) inspire nothing but apathy, complete indifference as I silently watch it play out, myself as stone-faced as the Buster Keaton this series has sometimes alluded to. It’s a shame because here Edwards had a marvelous opportunity to create a brand new comic creation, a character to last forever like Clouseau even while pioneering an entirely new persona. We get no persona, and otherwise just the reheated remains of Clouseau’s comic capering eight films old.

Clifton is not helped by how unenergetic the rest of the effort is. With certain exceptions, the Pink Panther series has grown less and less layered with time, losing comic density as it goes on – in a post-Airplane! era where one expects both quality and quantity in one’s humor. Speaking of Airplane!, what is with Edwards’ obsession with inflatables? Yes, Strikes Again had a funny gag about an over-inflated hump (and ego), but roughly half of the “jokes” surrounding Clifton concern one thing or another which is full of gas. It’s like Airplane!’s Otto, told with the hope audiences would have no memory of that particular ingenious ZAZ gag.


This particular fixation includes an off-brand blow-up doll Clifton hauls around the south of France. Apparently, it’s supposed to resemble a real-life, human female. One accepts a little leeway in believability, as even Clouseau’s most “successful” disguises never fooled anyone. And it seems Clifton’s doll cannot even fool the extras; I love the two ladies in the background in this café scene, who cannot keep a straight face in light of Clifton’s many, many minutes of doll mugging. Not that he’s being funny, oh Lordie no, but they simply cannot believe the stupidity they’re on the edges of.

Not only is Airplane!’s Otto the obvious inspiration for…uh, let’s say Dolly – it’s no less uninspired that what Edwards would’ve called it. Curse even reuses the “inflation resembles oral sex” joke, only now with cunnilingus replacing fellatio. One hopes there’d then be some risqué humor to the proceedings, but even now it all seems so toothless. How do you make a cunnilingus joke feel toothless?! (Vagina dentata subtext completely unintended…)

And once Clifton’s bit with the doll is over, he leaves the café, as though he weren’t there for any further reason whatsoever.

Anyway, outside of pratfalls and car chases which take entirely too long (Edwards’ leisurely paces are becoming an increasingly big problem), the token plot tissuing this together is equally desperate. Even when it’s just Clifton seeking Clouseau and/or the Pink Panther. Part of his quest takes him to see Sir Charles and Simone Lytton, allowing David Niven and Capucine to earn their names in lights one more time. Credited even above Wass, that’s how forgotten he is. And Robert Wagner’s George Lytton is here too, for the first time since The Pink Panther. Once again, none of these “leads” even bothers to stand from their seats.

These people simply tell Clifton what his plot shall be. Oh, there’s a health spa in Valencia, Clouseau might be there, go there and do a thing because we surely aren’t about to. Some plots simply send their heroes from scene to scene, but this is beyond the pale!


The ostensible villains of the piece are no better painted. Bruno Langois (Robert Loggia) returns from Trail, but with even less explanation. No, he simply appears with no introduction, and his name never even uttered. Needless to say, Langois’ motive for wanting first Clouseau, then Clifton dead is a little suspect. Further twists reveal his crime syndicate had nothing to do with the initial burglary of the Pink Panther, meaning he simply wants these bozos to die because they’re the good guys, or some such. I’m the villain because I’m the villain, and I’m uninteresting to boot!

Not that Langois’ assorted goons, mooks, henchmen and hitmen have any efficacy. Nearly every set piece not owing directly to inflated humpable dogs or ducks (I sense an unpleasant animal sex vibe here) is instead engendered by flailingly incompetent assassination attempts. We’ve seen the “duck to pick up a nickel, avoid the gunshot, which kills another killer instead” gag, oh…twenty times in the franchise. (This is a generous, non-exaggerated number.) More than ever, Edwards leans upon it here. Such a series devolution!

Then the villain subplot is resolved with an astounding lack of fanfare. For reasons I’d rather not real with, Clifton and a random blonde femme fatale (Leslie Ash) face the entirety of Langois’ gang (including Langois) in a Spanish back alley. They all fight, as Edwards seems to confuse normal self defense with slapstick. Clifton defeats the mass of mobsters, without using incompetence (or any other identifiable trait)!

Then it’s back to a hotel room with the blonde for a desultory seduction scene, one which Clifton rejects. This happens simply because the last several Panthers (other than Trail, for obvious reasons) did similarly at the starts of their Third Acts too. There is no joke here, no cleverness, no attempt to tie in the blonde with the rest of the story. (For as little attention as my disinterested self paid, I don’t think she is even explained…eh, she is British, though).


It occurs, in light of the alleyway scene, that Edwards’d’ve done well to cast someone other than Wass in the lead. Someone who at the time was just starting to marry silent comedy with physical adeptness. Someone who’d even play into Edwards’ obsession with Asians. I’m talking about Jackie Chan, and I simply present this paragraph to posit what the world would be like had such a thing occurred.

Third Act begun, the villains are already defeated. So…what now?! Clifton as useless as ever, the three Lyttons return to redirect him towards that same health spa they’d already mentioned. They even tow him there on a parasail, Dreyfus endures pratfalls of his own attempting to murder Clifton with a freaking bazooka (!!), nothing here merits further examination. Except for Wass’ dreadful performance, where it’s assumed loud, grating, nasal screaming is the height of hilarity.

…You know, from shots I’d seen prior to watching Curse, I feared Wass’ character would be a variation on Jerry Lewis – what with the series’ Franco-centric perspective. A little come out in Wass’ worst points, but things could’ve been much worse.

No matter, Clifton crashes directly into the health spa, and into the clutches of Countess Chandra (Joanna Lumley returning from Trail, but in a new role, because to hell with continuity). Also here is [drum roll please]…Inspector Clouseau!

Edwards gives up on his maxim to never recast Sellers, but in doing so he actually creates the one slightly amusing moment in all of Curse. In James Bond terms, we’ve seen the multi-movie triumph of Peter “Sean Connery” Sellers, and the one-film horror of Alan “George Lazenby” Arkin, we now get a third actor in the form of…Roger “Roger Moore” Moore.


Taking a brief break from Octopussy, Moore plays against his suave, debonair fop to do something…well, not that close to Sellers, not with the odd new voice and obsession with the word “swine,” but an interesting against-type bit of clumsiness nonetheless. And because a) Closueau’s characteristics are legion and amusing, and b) Roger Moore is actually a good performer, his cameo is Curse’s lone grace.

One amusing cameo and a few desultory physical jokes. A movie needs more than that…

Clifton is fed false information from Moore’s Clouseau – whom he takes for the real Roger Moore (though his name is never mentioned, in order to obscure the gag) – which he takes back to Dreyfus. This info suggests Clouseau did take on a new plastic surgery identity, but not as the third James Bond. Rather, Clifton falsely believes Clouseau became one Gino Rossi – the jerk that died in the pre-titles. Anyway, Rossi is dead, so Clouseau is thought dead. Dreyfus retires happy (though heavily bandaged), and Clifton is sent back with “honor” to New York – where we’ll never hear from him again!

There is an explanation to this confusing conclusion, but it is not offered up by the movie itself. Rather, good ol’ Wikipedia plotted Curse better than Edwards did. They don’t even say (in-film) that Rossi was the guy from 110 minutes ago, so you just gotta be able to connect faces. Oh, and it was Rossi who stole the Pink Panther diamond…And now Clouseau (as Roger Moore) has bedded up with Chandra as a criminal, happy to keep the diamond for himself. Which is such a dumbass conclusion to this franchise-long hero! It betrays so much of what Clouseau was about! And the Pink Panther is stolen from Clouseau in the conclusion by the Lyttons, because – Oh to hell with this movie!

That’s some complicated plot stuff at the very conclusion. Not that the non-plot stuff does any better. Rather than intentionally fashion Sergeant Clifton Sleigh into the series’ savior, with many more sequels to his name, instead Curse is the one and only time we’ll be seeing Wass’ stupid ass. Curse of the Pink Panther was the series’ long-time-coming franchise killer. It proved once and for all audiences had no more use for Blake Edwards’ unfortunate miscalculations re: comedy.

Not that audiences were beyond the simple (yet hard to do) slapstick pleasures The Pink Panther once boasted. Consider Lieutenant Frank Drebbin of The Naked Gun a little later in the decade… (That, incidentally, is another ZAZ product, suggesting how truly they’d usurped Edwards.) A bumbling police detective running through a genre pastiche, failing at every step yet somehow triumphing…yes, even the basic DNA of Clifton solid. But The Naked Gun was put together with ambition, zeal, zest, things Edwards was running most short of in his autumn years.

The inept investigator genre proliferates onwards in Clouseau’s absence, more often using secret agents in favor of cops. From Clouseau’s original ‘60s era we have “Get Smart,” and its ’80s cartoon counterpart “Inspector Gadget.” Later on in the ‘00s there occur Austin Powers and Johnny English and probably some other crap. And while this comic form continues, this Panther had had its day. Though Edwards wasn’t quite through yet…


Related posts:
• No. 1 The Pink Panther (1963)
• No. 2 A Shot in the Dark (1964)
• No. 3 Inspector Clouseau (1968)
• No. 4 The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
• No. 5 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
• No. 6 Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
• No. 7 Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
• No. 9 Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
• No. 10 The Pink Panther (2006)
• No. 11 The Pink Panther (2009)

The Pink Panther, No. 6 - Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)

The Pink Panther series had at last achieved repeatability through the combination of audience appreciation and creator involvement. Yet there was a problem: 1976’s The Pink Panther Strikes Back had closed the book on Pink Panther artistic exploration, as its’ fantastical comic book tale was surely Pink Panther exaggerated to its grandest logical extreme. It had Jumped the Shark, in the good sense that it negated any potential superior continuation. Any follow-up then cannot help but look lesser in comparison.


In light of this, the only choice writer/director Blake Edwards had with his Revenge of the Pink Panther (which, titularly, sounds just too much like Return of the Pink Panther to avoid confusion) was to pretend as though Strikes Again had never struck (again). The wonderfully ridiculous extremes of that story, and the logical consequences of its events, are abandoned for a “business as usual” caper. At least Revenge has the inspiration to examine the one underexplored notion of Strikes Again:

What if Inspector Clouseau were dead?

That question is of utmost importance to Herbert Lom’s magnificent Inspector Dreyfus. The only problem is he went supervillain, then literally vanished into thin air – a more permanent death than just about any in cinema. But he’s back anyway, ‘cause, well, Revenge is an Alternate Continuity! That means Dreyfus is still alive, and still confined to the nuthouse as in Return’s conclusion. Oh, and since he’d already peaked as the series’ villain, Dreyfus is now relegated to the role of the butt monkey. (Man, I’m in a TV Tropes linkin’ mood today! I am sorry.)

We’ll need a villain in his stead. Let’s go with [spinning the Random Villain Generator] the French Connection! Eh, why not, whatever? It’s just fill-in-the-blanks Mad Libs time, init? Heading this real world organization of murderous heroin smugglers is Robert Webbers…or at least, the character he plays, boring businessman Philippe Douvier. Desiring a continuity crossover with his fellow generic mobster types over in the American Mafia, Douvier seeks to impress them…by killing Clouseau!

Here’s how Peter Sellers’ immortal Inspector Clouseau is brought in, simply because. Eh, again, why not? If Clouseau vs. standard crooks sounds familiar, then the gags which follow shall be even more so. Seeing as this is a Strikes Backless universe, a lot of stuff gets repeated from there, as though Edwards’ Clouseauian inspiration was largely gone. In each, Clouseau improbably survives a massive explosion, has a run-in with a transvestite, ridiculously battles Cato, inadvertently avoids assassination, contends with a malfunctioning inflatable on a costume… Need I go on?


Explosion survival comes first, as Clouseau is targeted in the costume shop of one Auguste Balls (Graham Stark, series regular in a regularly irregular role). That name, Balls, yeah, titter-worthy gags derive from it. And since Balls’ death-by-explosion wouldn’t be funny, he survives too – both he and Clouseau rendered into wildly-smoking bits of human (Balls to the wall). In a series which has steadily eased into the “Looney Tunes” realm, this is expected. So is the fact that the French Connection’s bomb is one of those classic black ball anarchist deals.


Series formula dictates that at this stage Clouseau must return to his flat, once again refurnished after whatever we accept its last damage was. Here he must do battle with manservant Cato (Burt Kwouk) – and for the first time since A Shot in the Dark, Clouseau offers up exposition to justify this cartoonish relationship. The pitched slapstick Cato battle is typically of high quality. It still is here, though the joke is getting pretty abstract now with so many repetitions.

Now we can cue the transvestite scene I know you were all breathlessly anticipating since I briefly mentioned it above. Lured by a decoy phone call from Douvier (which is the traditional signal to end the Cato scene), Clouseau drives towards a forest ambush. But because the Edwardsian universe loves him, hitchhiking and crossdressing in advance is Claude Rouseau (Sue Lloyd, playing a man playing a woman, and edging Edwards ever closer to Victor Victoria). Rouseau is an escaped non-Dreyfus mental patient, which justifies whatever is about to happen. He/she/eh trades clothing with Clouseau, abandons him on the side of the road, then makes her/his/its way to the ambush. So it’s not Clouseau who dies in a fiery blaze, but a flaming drag queen.

Clouseau, for his part, is dragged off in drag by a couple of French policemen even more clueless than he is (I attest Clouseau is surprisingly smart in this entry). So he is hauled back to the loony bin in Rouseau’s deceased stead.

Funeral preparations are made for Clouseau, the central joke of Revenge being the extreme honor France holds for their beloved buffoon. We’re talking media coverage on a par with the late Princess Diana, a state funeral attended by Europe’s highest nobility and papacy, a Chinese whorehouse set up in his honor, the works. And Dreyfus is de-bedded from Bedlam, assigned with the task of hunting down Clouseau’s killers, as the man who knew him most intimately.

“I hated him intimately.”

Yes, Dreyfus, and you also take heaven-sent news of his violent, fire borne demise with surprising grace: “Clouseau is gone and I’m free – forever. Here, have a cigar.” You have very little of the twitchy mania of before, your series utility nearing an end. And you, Dreyfus, have the ignominy of serving little further narrative purpose in Revenge, except to occasionally see Clouseau here and there, and faint upon doing so. For a character that previously went “full retard” in his megalomaniacal doomsday supervillainy, this is underwhelming. Still funny, though.


Meanwhile, it doesn’t take long for Clouseau to learn of his own “death,” and use it to his advantage – see, he’s smart. I shall skip over the promised Chinese whorehouse scene, which is what you’d been breathlessly awaiting after having been satisfied with transvestitism. Let us simply say that Edwards’ cultural sensitivity has not improved with time, as he combines Clouseau’s love of the word “yellow” with a set of buck-toothed stereotypes they’d’ve rejected as outdated in the 1890s. This from the man who brought us Mickey Rooney in yellow face?! Say it ain’t so! (That’s to say nothing of klutzy Clouseau concealing his character in a kooky Cantonese coolie costume.)


No, I shall skip over the whorehouse without a single detour, and focus upon Clouseau’s motives. He hopes to bring down the assassins, and realizes this shall be simpler if he remains “dead.” The upshot of this is it sees Clouseau in costume far more often than usual, as this is a routine Edwards and Sellers have been growing increasingly fond of over the years. Some of his new personas featured in Revenge:

- A bearded Italian maestro with no shins.
- A transvestite (inadvertent).
- A man wearing a trench coat who has just escaped from the booby hatch.
- A salty seaman seeking info from a seadog (Alfie Bass) and a sea dog (a mutt).
- Something I didn’t take complete note of, probably a pimp.
- The Godfather.

That last one is Sellers’ take on Clouseau’s take on Brando’s take on an Italian American. Meaning it ultimately has as little to do with The Godfather as the rest has to do with The French Connection. It’s just Sellers saying things even more incomprehensibly than usual, and wearing some sort of experimental fat suit as he infiltrates the Maf-

But I’m getting ahead of the complex narrative. Douvier has arranged a meeting with his violent Italian buddies, over in Hong Kong for a change of setting. Clouseau manages to track them all there, using his bumbling imbecility…no, using genuine intellect and cleverness. There is of course some help in the form of a beautiful female – Simone (Dyan Cannon, Alice of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice), Douvier’s former mistress who is upset at him for having a wife (this being before the French Mistresses’ Rights Movement). Clouseau saves her life by falling down (seen it), she then falls for him (seen it).

Okay, so the bit where Clouseau ends up in bed with a beautiful woman is old hat, the joke being the same here as ever: Clouseau, like Sellers, is hardly the sort of man who warrants such feminine affection. The series is repeating itself, as I too am repeating myself by pointing out that the series is repeating itself.

Then it’s off to Hong Kong, with Simone and Cato in tow. It's nice to see Cato in an expanded role. Even he gets a disguise – if you think reading glasses could fool anyone, and apparently Clark Kent does. Thus Cato stumbles through a series of “Mister Magoo” pratfalls, as meanwhile Clouseau resolvwa the plotline and foils the villains using genuine tact. It’s odd at this stage that Cato has become e’er more foolish, and Clouseau less so. At least it keeps Edwards away from creating racial humor out of the Hong Kong population at large.

It all concludes with an overwhelming number of interested parties converging on the docks, and thence into a fireworks warehouse. No points for guessing what happens there. That is, especially considering this is the director of The Great Race, thus the man responsible for the greatest pie fight on all seven continents. A fireworks inferno is another of the classic silent finales, so Edwards can now check that one off his list. Things reach what ought to be a comic fever pitch, but which feels strangely strained instead. Chaos reigns, without a specific point, and Clouseau emerges triumphant – and alive. And we don’t even get to see how Dreyfus reacts to this! (Or I forgot it.)


Way too much of the humor in Revenge of the Pink Panther is watered down from repetition – yeah, yeah, we got it, tired jokes! The other problem is a common enough one for Edwards. He takes his time with the gags, in a post-Mel Brooks era which now craves swifter satire. This classicalist approach works when the setup is leading to something, as it is in the best of the Pink Panther films. When there is not a cumulative gag, however (like with Revenge), the time in between punchlines is merely dead space.

Clouseau, Cato and Dreyfus remain the only funny characters in this series, meaning whenever the focus isn’t upon them, we’re just awaiting their return (or revenge, I guess). By making the ostensible plot about the French Connection, Edwards minimizes his stars’ presence. The stuff with Douvier and his mistress is tiresome, the sort of flat semi-drama you often get from comedies when they’re failing to deliver the funny stuff. At least there’s never been any attempt to negate the central Clouseauian conceit with needlessly heartwarming piffle.

I’ve gone a whole film without saying this, but Revenge was Sellers’ swansong for his Clouseau role – though no one knew it at the time. Still, it was apparent his health was failing, and had been for most of the ‘70s Panther resurgence. This necessitated more and more stunt double use in each new film, until Sellers’ invaluable physical performances began to suffer. (His Clouseau in Revenge is a little like Roger Moore in his later James Bond adventures – which I feel is a bit of a prophetic statement.) But that’s getting ahead of the story, and the post-Sellers Pink Panther story is a truly bizarre tale best left for another day.


Related posts:
• No. 1 The Pink Panther (1963)
• No. 2 A Shot in the Dark (1964)
• No. 3 Inspector Clouseau (1968)
• No. 4 The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
• No. 5 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976))
• No. 7 Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
• No. 8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
• No. 9 Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
• No. 10 The Pink Panther (2006)
• No. 11 The Pink Panther (2009)