Review of The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) by Filipeneto — 08 May 2022

This film marks the return of the "Pink Panther" franchise after a few years of absence, that partially made us forget the bad experience in "Inspector Clouseau". Overall, not being an excellent movie, it can fulfill the minimum required by the public and give us some good jokes amid many follies.

The film begins with the theft of the Pink Panther Diamond, and the start of an investigation with a view to its recovery. Of course, inspector Clouseau will be called to the case, as he collaborated the last time the diamond was threatened, and it is evident that the suspicions of the incompetent detective will focus on the figure of Sir Charles Litton, which decides to abandon his golden exile in the Riviera to discover the whereabouts of the diamond.

The film, in practice, is an almost uninterrupted succession of jokes, most of which make no sense. Blake Edwards does what he can to bring us back what we saw good in the franchise's early films, but the formula used is not so interesting, perhaps because it starts tiring the audience. A joke may be funny told two or three times, but even the best joke loses interest after we hear it ten times, and that's what happens here, since the movie bets everything on very similar jokes, with Clouseau destroying all he touches like a disaster champion. Unfortunately, the main victim of all this is the script, which becomes increasingly difficult to follow. To be able to understand the story in full, I had to see the movie twice, and it almost never happens to me.

Peter Sellers, nevertheless, deserves all our attention and sympathy. The actor is very good and gives his best in this movie, as it is an imprint of his work. We are facing a professional, and a weight comedian, in excellent form. Christopher Plummer assumes, this time, the skin of the notorious jewelry thief Sir Charles Litton and can be perfectly up to what was asked. For me, as an actor, Plummer is the strongest and most competent name in this movie. Also, Catherine Schell was fine. Unlike some earlier actresses of this franchise, I felt that she wanted to be more than an attractive body and worked in this regard. Herbert Lom, in turn, never seemed so crazy as here, and that was really funnier than many of Seller's fools, I confess.

The movie is not a technical shine, quite the opposite. By betting everything in the comedy, the film leaves a good part of the most elaborate technical aspects. Even the conception of most characters is reduced to the basics if we think well. Thus, what stands out here is the quality of special and visual effects, the good performance of the doubles for dangerous scenes and the good design of the initial, animated and starring credits again, again by the Pink Panther itself, a character very dear to us all today. The soundtrack brings us back the theme of Mancini that we learn to love, but brings us nothing new or interesting beyond that. Cinematography is perfectly banal, and editing and pace are sometimes poorly achieved and tiring.