The laugh-out-loud comic genius of Peter Sellers’ Pink
Panther films isn’t represented in the series revamping. That’s why
Steve Martin’s take on detective Jacques Clouseau has been so roundly
dismissed. Except here’s the thing: The Pink Panther 2, like
2006’s The Pink Panther, is consciously a children’s film. At
that, it’s not a particularly good one, but it serves the same need the
Ernest movies did when many of today’s critics were kids. And as
that era’s childhood comedy totems go, Martin’s Pink Panthers
are still better than the Police Academy movies.
His Clouseau is a marble-mouthed dimwit, who thinks he’s smarter
than everyone in the room. “You fly to Paris tomorrow,” he’s told. “But
I cannot fly,” Clouseau replies. Jokes like that are dumb enough that
they become funny by virtue that someone bothered to write them.
When master criminal The Tornado is stealing world artifacts,
Clouseau is placed upon the detective “Dream Team.” His sense of French
supremacy when partnered with other global representation is the source
of most of The Pink Panther 2‘s humour.
Though the movie (with Jean Reno, Emily Mortimer, Alfred Molina,
Jeremy Irons, John Cleese and Lily Tomlin) is essentially junk—it
needs a bigger sense of scale, and more imagination in its
slapstick—it’s interesting how successfully Steve Martin refashions
himself as a comedic hero for grade-schoolers. He plays Clouseau as a
distinctive character from where Sellers took him. While abandoning his
original fans, Martin is more relevant with The Pink Panther 2 than Al Pacino and Robert De Niro have been in their recent films.
This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2009.
