Not a Seller, but certainly worth a look
Steve Martin is back as Inspector Jacques Clouseau! Many valuable items across the globe are being lifted by Le Tornado and he has to band together with a group of ace detectives to find out who Le Tornado is. More importantly, he has to make sure that all the items are back, including France’s invaluable Pink Panther diamond. Along the way, as you can imagine, he runs into situations that he doesn’t handle so well, including dressing up as the pope and falling over a ledge. His bumblings might be his downfall, but the good detective keeps searching and pushing forward.
I do understand that there are a good amount of people out there that simply cannot picture Martin taking over the role of Clouseau from the late Peter Sellers. While it does seem rather blasphemous to think about, Martin does a pretty decent job as the good inspector. Now, one of the biggest differences between Sellers and Martin is that Martin’s physical comedy isn’t as silent as Sellers. Peter Seller wasn’t the goofball that Martin is; Sellers took a hit without showing any goofy sign of expecting it. To me that is something great that separates the two actors. These Clouseaus are very much different. Martin plays an off-the-wall kind of Clouseau who is bound to screw up. Sellers takes the role seriously and presents it as such. When Sellers had something go terribly wrong, he didn’t honestly played the part of not expecting it. For example, in one of the Pink Panther films, he asked a hotel manager if his dog bit. The hotel manager replies no. Sellers character goes to pet the dog and the dog nearly takes a finger off. Sellers, without missing a beat, says that he thought the dog didn’t bite. The manager retorts that ‘that’ particular dog wasn’t his. Sellers didn’t give any indication that there was a joke about to happen, his Clouseau simply approached the situation as if he was going to pet that animal; the audience didn’t think twice about it. For Martin, he is giving the audience fair warning that something is going to happen. While that is certainly unique to Martin’s Clouseau, it probably doesn’t impress many fans of the series.
With that said, give Martin a break. He does create a very lovable, entertaining Clouseau that is an innocent pawn of hatred in many of his co-workers eyes. He brings a gentle moxie to the role and he delivers a very geniune love for the character. You can’t fault Martin for doing that, as it does allow you to laugh at this man’s goofiness. If you have never laughed at Martin before, this is the time.
Now having said that, the story itself is very shallow. There’s not much to it, it’s mostly antics. You can argue that the 70s Pink Panthers had the same structure, but in this day and age, the series can do much better than what the original movies contrived. Seller’s movies were expected to be hookie storylines with very serious moments of fun. When you go to pay $12 to see it now, you want a bit more depth to it all. Sure there is a storyline here about some very valuable objects being stolen, but it plays second fiddle to the moments of physical comedy that Martin set forth. You expect, as a viewer, to have a solid story (maybe not The Green Mile type depth) that really helps the comedy play off of. You would expect this, but the story itself is a little all over the place. You never have solid leads to wrapping it up, you get really strong moments of Martin being Martin, but the moments really don’t support what’s going on. For example, when Martin is re-enacting the Pope’s day, he is simply doing a comedy sketch while the story is saved by a simple key on a floor. These two things don’t belong together, but the comedy and story were forced together. The entire movie plays like this, which is quite unfortunate.
Come for the comedy, but expect the story to be on the side.
One thing that did help the story out, in terms of forgetting how disconnected it was, were the actors they hired to play the group of investigators. Andy Garcia, Alfred Molina and Jean Reno make up the ‘A-list’. Big name stars in a sub-par film help it out in the end. Garcia plays a suave Italian named…. well…. just watch for it in the movie. Alfred Molina finally gets to stretch his British accent as Chief Inspector Randall Pepperidge and Jean Reno is wonderful as Martin’s sidekick Ponton. Good support for a less than okay storyline. That’s an impressive list of people for this type of film.
More Blu than Pink
Does this film look good on Blu-ray? I think so, but it certainly isn’t the best I’ve seen or even a great transfer. It does look good, with some grainy moments during some of the darker lit scenes. I think that the transfer could have been better, or you could probably blame it on France’s horrible weather; not sure which. Regardless, it’s better than a DVD, but not quite as good as what I’ve seen from other studios recently. As for the audio, it’s good stuff for an action-esque comedy. You get a nice soundtrack and some great physical comedy sound effects. The audio is definitely better than the video.
As for features, here’s what you’re looking at:
Disc One
· Gag reel
· Drama is Easy…Comedy is Dangerous
· A Dream Team Like No Other
· Master Thief-Global Crime Showdown!
Disc Two
· Digital Copy File of The Pink Panther 2 for Portable Players
Disc Three
· Bonus disc featuring 27 Pink Panther cartoons
o The Pink Phink – 1964 Academy-Award winner for Short Subjects, Animated Films
o Pink Pajamas
o We Give Pink Stamps
o Dial ‘P’ For Pink
o Sink Pink
o Pickled Pink
o Pinkfinger
o Shocking Pink
o Pink Ice
o The Pink Tail Fly
o Pink Panzer
o An Ounce of Pink
o Reel Pink
o Bully For Pink
o Pink Punch
o Pink Pistons
o Vitamin Pink
o The Pink Blue Print
o Pink, Plunk, Plink
o Smile Pretty, Say Pink
o Pink-A-Boo
o Genie With The Light Pink Fur
o Super Pink
o Rock A Bye Pinky
o Pinknic
o Pink Panic
o Pink Posies
My kids loved the cartoons. Seriously speaking, that’s probably one of the coolest things about this Blu-ray and a nice notch in the belt of Fox for even considering such a set of features. Add those to the gag reel which is just funny and a featurette that is amusing as well, and what do you know…. solid features.