Review of The Pink Panther (2006) by Markb. — 31 Mar 2006

"Always look on the bright side of life," sang Monty Python during the crucifixion in Life of Brian. And so, in keeping with those musical words of wisdom and applying them to Steve Martin's virtually laugh-free remake of the popular Inspector Clouseau slapstick farces of the 1960s and 70s, I will now endeavor to catalog a few rays of sunshine peeking out of this almost total eclipse: 1.

) Its release gives MGM a promotional excuse to release a box set of Pink Panther cartoons, which with the dismantling of Warner Bros.' and MGM's theatrical cartoon wings and the slowing down of Disney's, provided almost the only new animated character to do a series of big-screen adventures in the 60s, some of which are little masterpieces of dry wit and stylish graphic design.

2.) Since Sony/ MGM chickened out of its original plans to release this movie last summer, it didn't have to compete with The Longest Yard and Bad News Bears for the title of Crappiest Non-Horror Remake of the Year, and it's got the field very nicely sewn up for 2006! 3.

) It's great to hear Henry Mancini's seminal theme music played in the big screen again (even if the accompanying opening credits animation, featuring a Martinized Clouseau, is just as substandard as the rest of the movie).

4.) Emily Mortimer (Match Point) almost singlehandedly rises above the muck, adorably playing a Gallic Miss Moneypenney with beguiling bemusement--and, unlike Martin, doing a comic French accent that works.

5.) Clive Owen, in an unbilled cameo as Agent 006, proves ONCE AGAIN that he's the rightful, unjustly robbed heir to 007. 6.) Even though Blake Edwards, the creator and director of the original Pink Panther movie series, has always struck me as an overrated comic talent whose humor is too often rather smug and mean-spirited (his best film was by far his most uncharacteristic one: the harrowing 1962 alcoholism drama Days of Wine and Roses), the total ineptitude of Shawn Levy's take on the material gave me a new appreciation of everything Edwards did RIGHT.

Edwards' slapstick-and-destruction sequences were always carefully and meticulously structured and made perfect sense in their own farcical universe; Levy's comic effects either come out of no logical place or, worse, are painfully predictable.

The original Edwards' Panther comedies (which many people feel peaked with A Shot in the Dark in 1965) worked surpisingly well as mysteries, too: you could logically deduce whodunit from the clues given you if you weren't being too distracted by Clouseau's antics, while the solution to Levy's puzzle is maddeningly arbitrary.

Worst of all is the character of Clouseau himself as written, directed and acted here; he's a total betrayal of everything Edwards designed him as being. Originally a brain-dead bumbler who either stumbled onto the culprit totally by accident or had someone else solve the case while he tripped over something, as played here he's required to leap approximately 78 I.

Q. points in the final stretch, solve everything, and become the hero even though in 75% of the movie he's clearly shown as tragically unable to plumb the hidden mysteries of a can opener. And Peter Sellers' genius at becoming completely invisible within his characterizations (illustrated in the HBO TV-movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, starring Geoffrey Rush, it's a talent that served Sellers even better in Dr.

Strangelove and Being There) worked beautifully in the role of Clouseau; Martin indulges his old stand-up comic's tendency to stand outside the role and loudly comment on it. The result, besides being thoroughly obnoxious, is a complete besmirchment of a character and performance he's allegedly paying tribute to.

(As though to compensate, Kevin Kline and Jean Reno, normally sterling comic talents, underplay to the point of flatlining.) 7.