Steve Martin returns to the role of the bumbling Inspector Clouseau in this completely unnecessary sequel. ‘The Pink Panther 2’ is a pic whose tired, broad slapstick shenanigans will definitely play better to kids than adults - as this particular adult barely remembers eliciting a chuckle.
The first pic did decent business so I suppose it’s no surprise that we get a second installment, but I was hoping that Steve Martin would look upon the first one as a nice try and quit while he was ahead. No such luck.
Look, Martin can be a comic genius (check out his ‘Born Standing Up’ auto-biographical novel for proof), but there’s no denying his cinematic output as of late couldn’t be considered anything other than lazy.
His last good pic in my opinion was ‘Bowfinger’ - which was 10 years ago (although his small role in ‘Baby Mama’ deserves a shout-out…). He has since coasted on family fare and the odd, serious dalliance i.e. ‘Shopgirl’. C’mon Steve!, and while we’re at it, Eddie!, I don’t think I need to tell you that broad, family fare isn’t always the key to commercial success either.
So Martin’s first ‘Pink Panther’ was tolerable if not quite a smile in the wake of Peter Seller’s belly laugh. Yet, all that was mildly amusing in the first gets the predictable rework here with Martin/Clouseau again mangling the word ‘hamburger’ and so on.
What is genuinely intriguing about this pic is the formidable talent they managed to wrangle up here - none of whom make much of an impression outside of stalwarts John Cleese and Lily Tomlin (why doesn’t Tomlin work more?!).
With a script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber along with credit to Martin, I’m having trouble pinpointing what exactly they got paid for. So some legendary items have been stolen across the world – the Magna Carta, Shroud of Turin, and Imperial Sword of Japan – with only a calling card left in their absence signed the ‘Tornado’.
Clearly, this calls for the skills of the best detectives around the world, Andy Garcia’s Italian Vicenzo, Alfred Molina’s British Randall Pepperidge, Yuki Matsuzaki’s Japanese Mazuto, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s Indian Sonia all join up with France’s…Inspector Clouseau to solve the crime with Clouseau’s partner Jean Reno and assistant Emily Mortimer along for the ride.
Tons of not really funny hijinks ensue with the most elaborate of these failed set-pieces seeing Clouseau don the pope’s garbs when inspecting the pope’s stolen ring and fooling the crowds at St. Peter’s for the Holy Father and Clouseau’s impersonation of a flamenco dancer which should have been at the very least amusing but doesn’t quite work due to staging and timing.
Garcia, Mortimer, Molina and Bachchan don’t quite embarrass themselves (the same can’t be said of Reno who looks positively baffled the entire time and not just at Clouseau’s goofball antics) but get little to work with although Mortimer is expectedly adorable and Bachchan expectedly gorgeous.
John Cleese gets a few exasperated moments that work but probably wouldn’t with anybody else. The best new character has to be Tomlin’s new political-correctness officer who has to school the decidedly anti - p.c. Clouseau (greets Mazuto as “my little yellow friend”) and never fails to pop up during his errant moments...irreverent moments the film sorely needed more of.
The 1.85:1 AVC 1080p encode is quite good showing off the vibrant color palette and detailed, European locations. If the film isn’t much to write home about, the high-def image is near-perfect. The film also sports a DTS-HD Master Aud track that’s also technically flawless.
Despite being billed as a ‘3-disc Collection’, the actual film-related extras are rather weak. We get a short featurette, ‘Drama is Easy…Comedy is Dangerous’ which presents the usual cast and crew interviews and BTS footage. ‘A Dream Team Like No Other’ looks at the strong cast put together. A short ‘Gag Reel’ round things out for disc 1.
Most notable I suppose for those that don’t have the various ‘Pink Panther’ cartoon collections is a whole second disc filled with 27 classic cartoons which is a nice complimentary bonus. The third disc is the now requisite digital copy.
A very tired second film in a franchise reboot that pretty much ended before it began, I can only really recommend for the preteens and even then, they might come away wondering why they just watched some old French guy bumble around for 90 minutes. Tech specs are great, however, so maybe a rental for families.
The Pink Panther 2 [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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