Review of Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) by Filipeneto — 04 Jun 2022

What is this??

Let's face it: with the death of Peter Sellers, the Pink Panther franchise is dead, or at least that's how it should have been. There are certain films and characters that are so associated with the actors that they bring them to life that any attempt to continue after their death sounds almost insulting. And that's exactly what happened here.

The film is so bad, so negative in its essence, that it deserves little consideration and attention: the plot is extraordinarily confusing, and it was designed to try to articulate in the best way the archive scenes used, where Sellers appears, in a performance almost beyond the grave. , through deleted scenes from previous films, which were reused here and mixed with new scenes, filmed on purpose. Herbert Lom and David Niven do everything they can, but I think even they didn't believe in the project, because the interpretive level is downright bad.

On a technical level, it's a poor film: the cinematography limps a lot, can't hide or disguise the file cuts, the colors are washed out and the film looks older than it turns out to be. The jokes often don't work, the film's pacing is exaggeratedly slow, and it stretches the plot excessively. Mancini's music is the only technical element that escapes being a total disaster.