The Pink Panther

Herald rating : *

A riff on, rather than a remake of, the 60s Peter Sellers classic, this is a crude and witless attempt to breathe life into an idea that was only fitfully funny.

The recent Sellers biopic reminded us that the 1963 original and two sequels in the 1970s were far from being his best work. He was miserable when he did the first one and by the time of the latter two, Being There was the only good work ahead of him. The three films had magic moments but large flat spots.

Martin, who shares credit for the lumbering script of this film, is a lot like Sellers in one regard - at his best he's wonderful and at his worst he's dire. This film falls squarely into the latter category.

His bumbling gendarme Clouseau is plucked from provincial obscurity by the scheming Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kline) to solve the murder of a soccer coach and the theft of a valuable diamond. Dreyfus, for reasons far from clear, thinks that Clouseau's ineptitude will help him garner the glory of solving the case.

Cue pratfalls, juvenile jokes (including farting), mangled Franglish, and idiotic acts that lack the essential ingredient of screen idiocy: they aren't smart. Better to rent the originals from a video library and see a man who was much less wide of the mark.

CAST: Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, Jean Reno, Emily Mortimer, Beyonce Knowles
DIRECTOR: Shawn Levy
RUNNING TIME: 93 minutes
RATING: M, contains adult themes
SCREENING: Village