PG, 1 hr. 32 min. Directed by: Harald Zwart. Release Date: February 6, 2009. DVD Release Date: June 23, 2009.
There are two points of view that
could be used when discussing this movie.
The first is from the point of view of the average adult, who might find
this movie dull, lifeless, and filled with buffoonery, even from those
characters that are not themselves buffoons.
Worse yet is that the story is immediately predictable because of a
singularly unsubtle attempt at foreshadowing.
The acting is passable at best, and Martin’s Inspector Clouseau is so
overacted that there are occasions when it appears that the other actors in the
scene are trying to catch up. Then there’s a child’s point of view. Your average kid would probably find this
hysterically silly, filled with surprises and insanity at every turn.
I don’t have any real knowledge
about this series or, in fact, anything Pink
Panther related. I didn’t know that
the title of the film didn’t actually refer to a panther that was somehow pink
until the movie started. I’ve never seen
the first in this series or the older series from… the 60s or 70s. I used to take a pass on the cartoons when
they were aired because I never thought they were very interesting.
When you add all this together, you
might predict that I’d have hated this.
Certainly Netflix’s Cinematch program did, and quite honestly so did I. I mostly picked this up as an effort to change
up my offerings for this blog. So, when
I not only didn’t hate the movie but laughed frequently throughout the course
of the film, no one was more surprised than I was. The humor isn’t sophisticated, nor is it
trying for anything even remotely sophisticated. The quality of humor is a bit like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which waffles
between entertaining slapstick and outright drudgery.
A few of the performances aren’t
terrible. Alfred Molina, for instance,
is pretty awesome, and I’m reminded (not for the first time in the wake of Spider-Man 2) that Molina is someone to
watch. Even silly Molina was
entertaining. John Cleese was also
pretty funny, although I wish that his part was not only bigger, but was in a
position to make a better impact on the direction of the film.
The movie’s far from perfect, but
it’s funny enough to be entertaining on occasion, although inconsistently. If
you have a kid in tow, you’ll probably enjoy this a lot more, because their
reactions are going to be classic.
