March 3, 2006

Martin and Beyonce make a mess of 'The Pink Panther'

By JEREMY KOPP and PHILIP LeMASTER
pcl001@marietta.edu and koppj@marietta.edu

Jeremy: It’s been awhile since I’ve seen Edward Blake’s ‘Pink Panther’ movies, but I remember laughing a lot more at them than I did at director Shawn Levy’s update.

As a prequel to the original films, the renowned and respected Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) assigns Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin) his first case; to find the missing Pink Panther diamond that was stolen simultaneously to the murder of a French soccer coach amidst a stadium of cheering fans. Dreyfus wants the most incompetent inspector in France to use as a decoy while he conducts the real, secret investigation.

From what I understand after watching the HBO film ‘The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,’ Sellers – the original Clouseau – was a bit of a nutjob, and he threw himself into his roles with such passion and desperation that Clouseau’s outrageousness came off as almost…”natural,” whereas Martin’s portrayal feels forced and ineffective. Martin wears the ridiculous suits and speaks with a ridiculous accent, but it feels like he’s imitating Sellers’s Clouseau rather than actually embodying the character himself.

But it isn’t just Martin who fails to perform; Kline is equally inferior to the original Dreyfus, played by Herbet Lom. Just like in ‘Goldmember,’ Beyonce may as well have read her lines from cue cards. Jean Reno, as Clouseau’s partner assigned to spy on the Inspector’s work, is allowed little to do with his character but wince and grimace in response to the catastrophes Clouseau creates.

If you’re into slapstick, you might enjoy the extravagant messes Clouseau makes, except that slapstick comedy is hard to reinvent or make fresh, and I feel that it’s a brand of humor that nearly died after the final ‘Naked Gun’ film (in fact, with a ‘PG’ rating, ‘The Pink Panther’ plays like a ‘Naked Gun’ movie for kids). The funniest scenes don’t involve physical comedy – my favorite involves a dialect coach struggling to teach Clouseau to say “hamburger” as they’d say it here in the states – but the film has very little of anything original to offer.

The question of why they felt the need to continue the ‘Panther’ series without Blake and Sellers is the real case Clouseau should be assigned to. (1 ½ stars)

Philip: The latest in a line of ‘Pink Panther’ movies, this installment never reaches any sort of enjoyable moment.  Starring Steve Martin as the clumsy French detective Clouseau and Beyonce Knowles as a—PREPARE TO BE SHOCKED—pop star, the film has a promising start in a family film kind of way.  After the murder of a famous French soccer coach, Clouseau hunts for the killer but makes a fool of himself in the process.  Instead of being a cute film full of laughs, ‘The Pink Panther’ lets its plot take back seat to an onslaught of gross physical comedy involving farting and connecting electrodes to genitals.

Steve Martin’s comedic skills have seen much better days than in ‘The Pink Panther,’ but Beyonce is absolutely dreadful as international star Xania.  Her role basically involves a few horrible lines with a couple obligatory performance scenes.  Family films are typically money makers with lots of laughs for the kids and some morals to make parents happy, but ‘The Pink Panther’ has neither.  In a theatre full of kids and their parents, the only laughs I heard came from Jeremy whenever Beyonce opened her mouth and spoke with the passion of a lobotomized sloth.  Although I haven’t lost faith in the PG rating yet, I can only imagine the most masochistic of people wanting to see this film. (0 stars)