(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)
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