The Pink Panther (2006)

Steve Martin’s done it again. I don’t mean that he’s made another comedy classic – to the best of my recollection, his last great film was 1987’s Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. By “done it again,” I mean he’s remade an old favorite (as he did with Spencer Tracy’s Father of the Bride) and turned it into a degrading spectacle worth less than the film on which it’s printed.

When it was announced that the Peter Sellers comedy classic The Pink Panther would be given the prequel treatment, I was mortified. Sellers was inimitable as the bumbling French Inspector Clouseau, and I feared that Steve Martin was all too American to play the part.

My fears were justified.

After a famed soccer coach is murdered and the Pink Panther diamond goes missing from his finger, the race is on to catch the killer before he – or she – strikes again. Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) wants to put the bumbling Clouseau (Martin) on the case for one of the most hackneyed reasons in film history; while Clouseau stumbles through the case, Dreyfus will investigate and (presumably) solve the case first and become a hero.

In the original Pink Panther, Clouseau didn’t even solve the theft of the Pink Panther diamond. In fact, he fumbled the case so much that he was convicted of the theft himself! One of the funniest moments of the original was when Clouseau, mobbed by shouting women asking how he had become such an attractive cat burglar, told his adoring public that “It wasn’t easy.”

It certainly wasn’t easy to sit through Martin’s interpretation. Whereas Sellers had a naturally exaggerated French accent, Martin’s seems forced, especially in a protracted “English pronunciation” class, where Martin is unable to correctly pronounce “hamburger.” I sat through this feeling like a convicted man waiting for a pardon from the governor.

And, as good of an actor as Kevin Kline is, he doesn’t come close to Herbert Lom, the actor who played Dreyfus in the original movies. Lom’s over-the-top frustration with Clouseau was unrivaled by Kline’s almost too cool for the room sangfroid. Yes, it’s a prequel, but it might have been better served if Kline had played an altogether new character.

Most of the movie felt like an extended episode of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” replete with hits to the groin and embarrassingly predictable pratfalls. After a while, the dumb humor got to me, and I actually chuckled.

That’s not to say that the movie is entirely without any positives. Emily Mortimer plays the part of naïve secretary Nicole well, and her comedic delivery makes me wonder why I’m only just now hearing about her.

By far the highlight of the movie was a surprise cameo by rejected Bond-frontrunner Clive Owen. Owen has a sum total of two scenes as British Agent 006, “one away from the big one.” I’m not sure if this is a jab at Owen’s rejection for the Bond role or a tease for fans of the genre, but I know that after seeing The Pink Panther, I’m less optimistic about Daniel Craig’s upcoming Bond debut in Casino Royale. “You could have done a lot better,” I said after seeing Owen as 006.

“You could have done a lot better” was a recurring theme, as I continually thought the movie could have been improved. Throughout the movie, we’re told that Clouseau is an idiot, and his stupidity is rammed down our throats with gaudy displays of imbecility. In the end, though, Clouseau figures it all out with sangfroid that would make even Sherlock Holmes envious. This character flaw destroys our impression of Clouseau, a man who (in the original film) was not able to tell that his wife was complicit in the Pink Panther theft.

Notice that I’ve not mentioned Beyonce Knowles. That’s because she’s playing the same part she always plays: a foxy singer with something to hide. And she doesn’t play it well, either.

While it’s nowhere near as abominable as the waste of space Son of the Mask, The Pink Panther is just one of those movies that comes early in the year in hopes of turning a profit. Don’t be surprised if the movie’s up for a few Razzies, because it’s certainly not the gem of celluloid that the Blake Edwards-directed original was.

In the words of Inspector Clouseau, “Zis is an outrage!