The Pink Panther Strikes Again

By rights this should have been just another moderately amusing pink panther film. Instead "The Pink Panther Strikes again" is an uproariously funny film that is not only the best in the series but one of the funniest comedies of all time.

As usual the main charactor is Klutzy French inspector Jacquez Clouseau. In this outing Clouseau has been promoted to chief inspector thanks mostly due to that fact his sheer idioicy has driven his former boss Charles Dreyfus insane.

After spending three years in an asylum, Dreyfus seemingly has overcome his Clouseau complex. However on the day the former chief inspector is to be released his old 'friend' Clouseau pays him a pratfall laden visit. Within minutes Clouseau's bumbling antics undo three years of intense psycho therapy and Dreyfus flies into a murderous rage.

His release revoked, Dreyfus is committed for life but refuses to except his fate. He escapses with one objective in mind, kill Clouseau. But the insideous plotting of a determined madman is nothng compared to blind luck and Clouseau none to gracefully eludes every attempt on his life.

Undaunted, the lunatic Dreyfus embarks on his most sinister scheme to date. A plot designed to force the governments of the world to use their top assassins to destroy Clouseau once and for all.

Peter Sellars is priceless as Clouseau. Herbert Lom is nearly as good as straightman supreme Charles Dreyfus. Still much of the success for the film belong to producer Blake Edwards who oversaw nearly every aspect of this brillant farce.

This Pink Panther film ranks as one of the best there ever was... The plot was simple, Chief Inspector Dreyfuss (who is becoming a psycho since A Shot in The Dark), escapes from the mental institute and plan to kill Inspector Clouseau (which is by far one of the best comedy characters of all time). He then kidnaps a professor of high rank and builds a Doomsday device to kill off the world so that Clouseau is gone. Peter Sellers is at his best still as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, getting into and out of trouble with hilarious concepts and quotes. Dreyfuss is very funny and shows his psychotic personality when he becomes an even more psychotic person. Best scene is when Clouseau and his manservant Kato, wreck Clouseau's apartment as they usually do. THIS is comedy at it's finest along with A Shot in The Dark.

This was the fourth movie in the Pink Panther franchise and, despite the title, the titular diamond that was the namesake of the original and The Return of… has nothing to do with this entry. By now, Pink Panther had come to mean not gimmick for the sake of a comedy plot, but the world of the wonderfully inept Inspector Clouseau, and a vibrant brand of latter-day screen slapstick.

One of the most consistently brilliant elements of the earlier pictures was Clouseau's relationship with the increasingly demented Dreyfuss. For The Pink Panther Strikes Again, this relationship becomes the central premise of the whole movie. As such the scope is there for more-or-less continuous comedy with very little else to complicate it. Apart from, that is, a James Bond spoof slant, with Dreyfuss taking on the role of the eccentric super villain. This in turn allows for some large-scale actiony gags, reminiscent of the wilder escapades of silent comics Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Peter Sellers's stunt double Joe Dunne received a lot of work here.

This also allows for a greater part to be taken in comic staging by director Blake Edwards. A Shot in the Dark was nearly all Sellers, and that was very good in its way, but for Strikes Again we really get to see Edwards's outsize and somewhat surreal comic creations at their most unbridled, from the perfectly-timed three way fight between Clouseau, Cato and Dreyfuss to Clouseau's bungled attempts to get into Dreyfuss's castle. But Edwards still has a way with the smaller comedy confection, as usual his trademark tactic being to make almost everything invisible to the audience, showing just enough to make a gag work. For example, there is a very funny set-up in a public toilet where we only see the feet at the bottom of the cubicles.

There's a lot of verbal comedy too in the Blake Edwards/Frank Waldman screenplay, which is of a middling quality and gets a little tiresome at times. But as we see for example in the scene where Sellers interrogates the professor's house staff, Sellers and Edwards have brilliant timing in punctuating a talky scene with physical gags. Occasionally the humour gets just a little too silly, and there are a lot of clichés – such as the "that is not my dog" line, which I'm sure predates this movie, and the stepping-on-a-rake gag, which predates cinema.

But perhaps this latter is a deliberate tribute to the staples of slapstick. It becomes apparent, as Clouseau inadvertently survives numerous assassination attempts, that he succeeds purely by virtue of the fact that he is a slapstick hero and a wake of chaos must follow him wherever he goes. It is a kind of meta-comedy. And herein lies one of the slightly disappointing things about this movie. Often Clouseau is saved, not directly by his incompetence, but by sheer luck. When a giant pretzel stops him getting skewered by a killer disguised as a buxom wench, it is funny, but it is not really a Clouseau gag. It seems, with Sellers's lessening interest in the franchise (not to mention the heart condition which kept the aforementioned Mr Dunne employed), that perhaps the character around whom the whole thing revolved was beginning to be watered down.

Of the Pink Panther series of films, this is the best with the possible exception of the original. Clouseau and Cato outdo themselves in the hide and seek game they play in each film. In this one however they have learnt from the mishaps in previous films and set the tone for a truly hilarious turning of events. The visit to the Oktoberfest takes a real comic view of the Cold War but Clouseau's inspection of the Fassbender house is even better. Throughout the film the storyline twists and turns and together with the background tunes combine terrifically -- see Sellers assault on Mondschein castle! The lunatic Dreyfuss is at his craziest from start to finish, how did he get his eye to twitch so much? The Inspector's love interest played by the very sexy Lesley Ann Down adds a further dimension to the plot with James Bond overtones. A film you can watch again and again.

The Pink Panther Strikes Again **** / *****

Dir: Blake Edwards; Starring: Peter Sellers

Funny gazillionth sequel (not literally!) sees Chief Inspector Clouseau (Sellers in his iconic role) being chased down by an escaped madman with nervous ticks. Fun from start to finish, and I actually prefer it to the original "Pink Panther" film. It's zanier, fresher, and seems more like a wild spoof in the vein of "Austin Powers" rather than an outdated, unfunny bore like (I find) the first film.

Highlight: Clouseau trying out the "Hunchback" costume and inflating himself into the air. This was used again in one of the worst films of 2002, "The Master of Disguise," but this is inarguably much better.

**** / *****