MOVIE REVIEW

'The Pink Panther'

Steve Martin brings his bag of tricks to the role of Inspector Clouseau and winds up making it his own.

By Carina Chocano
Times Staff Writer

February 10, 2006

"For more than a decade, the beloved franchise has lain dormant," reads a rather delightfully florid passage in the publicity materials for the new "Pink Panther" movie, "its reintroduction to contemporary audiences reliant on finding the perfect actor to step into the late Sellers' shoes," conjuring images of Peter Sellers in a glass casket, surrounded by anxious dwarves debating how best to orchestrate his "reintroduction." It's an all-new spin on compulsive cinematic recycling: The Sleeping Beauty rationale.

But does the grand "reintroduction" theory of remakes and reimaginings really make any sense? Isn't it precisely contemporary audiences who don't require reintroducing to hits of the past, thanks to the magic of recording technology? And if they were unfamiliar with the originals, wouldn't that make the brand-identity factor negligible?

The new "Pink Panther" kicks in with an animated sequence featuring a squat cartoon Clouseau and the slinky panther playing cat and mouse to the strains of Henry Mancini's sublime burlesque theme, and it never strays too far from its origins. Director Shawn Levy, takes — perhaps unadvisedly, considering — full possessory credit for this gift-store reproduction of a Blake Edwards movie but basically sticks to the formula.

The story begins when Yves Gluant, France's most famous soccer coach (and boyfriend of the beautiful pop star Xania, played by Beyoncé Knowles) is murdered in plain sight in front of a huge crowd after leading his team to victory against China. By the time anybody notices that Gluant is dead — killed by a poison dart to the neck — the priceless Pink Panther diamond has mysteriously disappeared from his finger.

Enter Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline), who has been nominated for the Medal of Honor for the seventh time. Apprehensive about making any mistakes in such a public case, he assigns it to Clouseau. His plan is to make some headway on the case, then take over when Clouseau inevitably bungles it. Kline's Dreyfus is both more collected and cold-blooded a chief inspector than Herbert Lom's, who was a much more irascible type prone to injuries and breakdowns.

Of course, it was the injuries and breakdowns that lent Edwards' "Pink Panther" movies their latent pathos, which was always visible underneath the inflatable hump jokes. Clouseau and Dreyfus were both exceedingly vulnerable — Clouseau because of his hubris and insecurity and Dreyfus chiefly because of Clouseau. In the new version, that bit of psychological tension has been wiped off the counter and spritzed with sanitizer. Clouseau, dumb-ish, good; Dreyfus, snooty, bad.

Instead of Cato, who might have sparked a letter-writing campaign (one never knows), Clouseau has for a sidekick Ponton (Jean Reno), a detective second-class whom Dreyfus assigns to keep an eye on him.

The film mostly steers clear of postmodern gestures save for a disconcerting scene in which Clouseau encounters a James Bond type in a casino. The scene spoofs "Casino Royale," in which Sellers spoofed Bond. This time, he's played by Clive Owen, who not only lets Clouseau take the credit for his impromptu crime-solving but also introduces Clouseau to his signature drink, the idiotic flaming mojito.

Martin's Clouseau is as clumsy and hapless as his predecessor and probably more innocent. It's this innocence that lends the love story between him and his secretary, Nicole (an adorably goofball Emily Mortimer), a sweetness that Sellers could not have resisted making just a little dirty. The best thing about the replica is how wholeheartedly Martin throws himself into the physical comedy, which is uniformly hilarious. I won't spoil them by describing them, except to say this: soccer ball, soundproof room, accent coaching, hamburger and background dancing.

But as Martin himself has pointed out, his Clouseau is not bungling so much as he is "living on another plane." This may dovetail more snugly with Martin's old wild-and-crazy persona, but it also suggests an unwillingness to portray Clouseau's more unattractive characteristics. The new Clouseau emerges triumphant from the wreckage of his own incompetence, just like the old one.

But the movie asks us to celebrate his brainless victory over the very bad Dreyfus. And you feel none of the empathy you did for him in Edwards' movies, which repeatedly confirmed that the world really is the kind of place where stupidity is lavishly rewarded.

The beauty of the old Clouseau — apart from his tendency to get his hand caught in spinning globes and the way he pronounced "bump," was that he really wasn't a very likable person. He was snippy and mean to butlers, not just oblivious but willfully blind to his mistakes. So there's some cosmic irony in that Clouseau, incorporated into the first "sequel," "A Shot in the Dark," which was based on a play by Marcel Achard called "L'Idiote," was more of a jerk than an idiot. And that Martin's character in "The Jerk," whom his Clouseau resembles a little, was more of an idiot than a jerk.

So the jerk who was actually an idiot is now playing the idiot who was kind of a jerk. Or something like that. I'm terrible with reintroductions.

"The Pink Panther"

MPAA rating: PG for occasional crude and suggestive humor and language.

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