The Pink Panther Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)February 10th, 2006
THE PINK PANTHER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
Your enjoyment of THE PINK PANTHER, a remake of the 1963 classic Peter Sellers film, will depend on several things -- your love of the original, your tolerance of relentless, heavy slapstick and, most of all, your ability to withstand an hour and a half of an audio assault on your ears, as Steve Martin hams it up for all he's worth with the silliest accent in recent memory. After his work in the disastrous CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 2, his fans will certainly want to cut him as much slack as possible in order to be able to buy him as the next Inspector Jacques Clouseau. But, although I applaud his relentless energy in chewing up the scenery, I found nothing to laugh at in his performance. Granted I did smile some, but, overall, I was happiest when the film was over. My fear is that it will become a big hit, thus generating innumerable sequels, or, more precisely, remakes of sequels.
The setup for the plot is that someone has killed the owner of the famous pink panther diamond and stolen the jewel, all right in front of a TV audience of millions at a soccer game. Jason Statham plays the owner, and singer Beyoncé Knowles plays his girlfriend. The film's 92 minutes are made to accommodate several Beyoncé songs.
Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) wants to catch the thief himself, so he assigns the case to the most doofus detective in the land, Inspector Clouseau. Chief Inspector Dreyfus figures that Inspector Clouseau will make a fool of himself, allowing Chief Inspector Dreyfus ample time to solve the crime himself.
If you've seen the trailers, you already know the jokes since they are all just variations on the same theme. I found the trailers pretty intolerable, and the movie lived up to its billing, again proving my rule that bad trailers are quite accurate predictors of movie quality.
As he attempts to deduce what happened to the big rock, Inspector Clouseau yucks it up with jokes ranging from farting in a sound proof booth -- which proves not to be so -- and helping out 007 less one, agent 006 played by Clive Owen.
No matter how much sexual innuendo they crammed into the film's PG rating, I never laughed. Please let there be no remakes of the sequels.
THE PINK PANTHER runs a long 1:32. It is rated PG for "occasional crude and suggestive humor and language" and would be acceptable for kids around 9 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, February 10, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
