Movie 70: Pink Panther 2

Steve Martin returns as Inspector Jacques Clouseau. An international dream team of detectives is formed to try and catch a master thief, The Tornado, who is stealing priceless artefacts from around the world including the pink panther diamond. Clouseau is chosen to represent France as it’s top detective after the events of the first movie. For some reason.

I’m going to say something I didn’t think I’d say now. I’d welcome a Pink Panther 3.

I can remember laughing once during the first film, and only wance. The hamburger scene. You can search on You Tube if you haven’t seen it. That was genuinely funny. The rest of the film was pretty damned awful. This……wasn’t.

I may have been an easier audience this time. It might be because I had low expectations and expected to hate it. But it has plenty of laughs. This isn’t the common consensus but comedy is subjective.

It’s not overly clever, I worked out any twists before they happened. The humour is generally broad slapstick. And the weak point of the film is still Martin’s overly hammed Clouseau, the worst scenes are when he has to completely carry them, but it’s a VAST improvement over the first.

I don’t have any particular fondness for the originals btw. I don’t think I’ve seen a whole Pink Panther movie, which I know is a shame. I do like Sellers a lot. I did watch a fair few of the Rinky Dink Panther’s cartoon shows and seem to remember liking them. So if you’re a big fan of the old ones the deep abiding hatred might still be there for this as I doubt it’s on par.

There’s some decent slapstick, some alright verbal humour, John Cleese being funny John Cleese, and comedy foils Alfred Molina and Andy Garcia doing a great job at being more or less straight men (the sparing between Clouseau and Garcia’s Vicenzo does provide a few of the laughs though). It’s a not bad film. Not amazing, but not bad.

I doubt you have to suffer the first, just watch the amburgarrrrrrrr scene, to get the deal with this one. Though I will admit I could be wrong on this one.

Next up: Green Street 2. Heard that’s meant to be shite too.