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Printer-Friendly ModePanther not the coolest cat
February 20, 2006 —
The Pink Panther is a very unnecessary movie, but does manage to provide some entertainment and laughs. Steve Martin plays a character that is unlike anything he has played before, yet is the same. Those who find him generally annoying as an actor have no reason to see this movie, but there isn't a great deal here for those who generally like him, either.
The Pink Panther takes place in France, where the head coach of a renowned soccer team has just been killed. Not only that, but missing is the pink panther, his outrageously huge diamond ring that he acquired as an heirloom. What makes the crime unique is that he was killed in public, in front of millions, at the conclusion of a televised soccer game.
The police are baffled, and leery that the publicity the crime has will result in an overly public investigation. Rather than have the media get in the way, they devise a masterful plan - take the most incompetent and foolhardy officer they can find, and publicly put him in charge of the case. While the media follows him and his dead ends, a crack team will solve the crime without interference.
And, of course, Steve Martin is that incompetent one. The Pink Panther is not subtle or dry humor; it is extremely silly, over the top filmmaking, and from his first scene, Martin makes this clear. Wildly tossing aside curtains with karate chops while loudly talking about the weather to "secure the area," coupled with his hilariously bad French accent, Martin is relied on completely for the success of the movie.
Unfortunately he can only do so much, as a great deal of the material is rather hackneyed, and simply not that funny. There are clever moments, though, as well as ones where the performances create some very genuine humor. One running gag involving a cyclist was quite well done, and the movie knew where to quit, refraining from taking one joke too far.
Having never seen the original Pink Panther, it is difficult to gauge how successful The Pink Panther is. Surely the original must have been more, well, original, and perhaps many movies since have borrowed from some of its elements, and that is why much of the humor here seems so irrelevant and cliched.
The movie has an unusual flow: until the climax of the film, there really seemed to be no ups and downs. It seems a bit of a plodding affair, without any sense of expectation regarding upcoming plot twists, jokes, or even events period. This makes it a movie very easy to be detached from. However, the worst movies are not ones whose great offense is that they become like just watching a moving screen. The worst movies are the ones that anger the viewer with their incompetence or ignorance. That is a crime The Pink Panther is not guilty of.
This is a difficult movie to review, because it is not good enough to particularly recommend to anyone, nor is it so bad that people should really be urged to stay away from it. Die-hard Steve Martin fans, and perhaps fans of the original film, may find it of value. This is not the first recent film one should venture out to see, but it isn't the last either.