The Panther’s in the Pink
By Josh Larsen

The Pink Panther movies were never known for their sophistication. In fact, sophistication—particularly of the snobby, artificial European variety—was always one of their main satirical targets.

That tradition thankfully continues in Steve Martin’s The Pink Panther, a gleefully unsophisticated farce that nicely captures the ramshackle irreverence of the previous installments. Any movie that lampoons the Smart car is not trying to impress the beautiful people. (The scene in which Martin’s inept Inspector Clouseau has difficulty parallel parking his Smart car in a gargantuan open space is one of this new picture’s many absurd laughs.)

The overwhelmingly negative reviews from most movie critics would have you believe that Martin’s version is an affront to some cinema landmark. That’s what happens when critics let their memories guide them rather than revisiting original films. From 1963’s The Pink Panther all the way through to 1993’s Son of the Pink Panther, filmmaker Blake Edwards’ comedies were always something of an iffy proposition. Even at their sporadic best—1964’s A Shot in the Dark—the movies worked mostly thanks to the inspired clumsiness of Peter Sellers as Clouseau.

Much of Clouseau’s buffoonery grew directly out of his European surroundings. A Shot in the Dark takes aim at the aristocracy, specifically a prominent French family whose mansion has been soiled by the murder of one of their staff. While Clouseau falls for the main suspect—a lovely maid played by Elke Sommer—Edwards weaves a first-rate sex farce around him, hilariously lampooning the hypocrisy of this supposedly sophisticated household. (The movie’s funniest moment might be its extended opening shot, in which the camera quietly watches from outside the mansion as the various masters and servants sneak in and out of each other’s beds.)

The skepticism coursing through these films likely came from the filmmakers’ outsider status. Sellers, of course, was British but hardly of noble extraction, while Edwards hailed from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Together, they made expatriate comedies—at once delighted by and distrustful of the European culture they were set within.

All of which makes Steve Martin, who co-wrote this latest Pink Panther, a far more credible candidate for Clouseau than critics have admitted. Many of the pans of the movie predictably focused on the star’s perceived shortcomings in comparison to Sellers, a critical tactic which really doesn’t do either actor any favors. Sellers’ talent encompassed far more than Clouseau slapstick—witness his multipart tour de force in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove—while Martin is one of the movies’ premiere physical comedians in his own right. What was he but an American Clouseau in 1979’s The Jerk?

Martin gently tweaks America in The Pink Panther—training to go undercover in the U.S., Clouseau is taught the all-important phrase: “I would like to buy a hamburger.” But it’s always clear where Martin’s allegiances lie. (After reluctantly biting into a hamburger, Clouseau sheepishly admits it’s delicious.)

Some of Martin’s targets are easy, including the tortured and snooty French accent he adopts, which reduces each conversation to a quizzical stalemate. Yet Martin also gives Clouseau the particular air of French arrogance that can only be imitated by an American who has been subjected to it. After Clouseau is assigned to investigate the murder of a famous French soccer coach, he gives a speech at a press conference in which he pompously pledges to solve the crime partly “because France is France.”

The Pink Panther, true to its predecessors, has its weak spots and its dead ones, most notably whenever pop singer Beyonce Knowles attempts something that could vaguely be called acting. (Not even playing an “international pop star” named Xania seems to make her comfortable.) Meanwhile, Kevin Kline, as Clouseau’s exasperated superior Dreyfus, misses another opportunity to send up European haughtiness: he takes an over-the-top part and underplays it.

Even so, only sentimentalists who recall the original Pink Panther movies will mark this version as a failure. The only disappointment here is in the film’s critical reception.