Directed by: Harald Zwart
Starring: Steve Martin, Jean Reno, Emily Mortimer, Andy Garcia, Alfred Molina, Yuki Matsuzaki, Aishwarya Rai
Other Actors of Note: Lily Tomlin, John Cleese, Jeremy Irons
Plot: Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Steve Martin) the legendary French Officer of the Law, who single-handedly saved the priceless Pink Panther Diamond, has been working outside the museum where the diamond is on display writing parking tickets for the last 6 months. Chief Inspector Dreyfus (John Cleese) assigned this duty to his bumbling and inept police officer to get him out of his hair. Recently, treasures from around the world have been stolen by the Tornado, and an international dream team of detectives is being assembled to capture him. Chief Inspector Dreyfus is ordered to assign Clouseau to the dream team. As soon as Clouseau joins the team, the Pink Panther Diamond is stolen by the Tornado. Now Clouseau must not only capture the Tornado, but save the diamond again. Taken from www.imdb.com.
I am not an apologist of Steve Martin's remake of the classic Peter Sellers comedy "The Pink Panther." This is not because I join the rest of the population in thinking it's horrible, it's that I don't feel Steve Martin or his remake have anything to apologize for.
People complained that lead character Jacques Clouseau was played too outrageous, too arrogant, and too offensive in comparison to his counterpart in the original film. And they're right, Clouseau was practically the villain of the original "Pink Panther" and was played as nothing more than clumsy and a bit clueless and his French accent sounded as near to authentic as an Englishman could. This is in sharp contrast to how Peter Sellers (and Alan Arkin and briefly Roger Moore) played the role in subsequent films.
Steve Martin played the part spot on with all the over-the-top arrogance and unconvincing accent of the latter Sellers' performances to a tee. Steve Martin had made a lot of poor choices in the twilight of his career but taking on the role of Jacques Clouseau was not one of them. It wasn't highbrow humor, but then again neither were most of the old movies and it worked very well as a reasonably faithful remake.
The Pink Panther 2, however, has a great deal to apologize for. In this continutaion of the first film, which barely even refers to the first film, where a jewel thief named The Tornado (why they didn't call him The Phantom as an homage to the original film is beyond me) is stealing the national treasures of several countries (The Magna Carta, The Pope's ring, and of course the Pink Panther which is now a tear-drop gem as opposed to the giant ring it was in the previous film and no longer owned by Beyonce Knowles.) and a "dream team" of detectives led by Clouseau is formed.
Naturally Clouseau fucks up any and everything possible, causes a great deal of property damage (including burning down a fancy Italian restaurant, twice), and other shenanigans. Then he solves the case at the hour and fifteen minutes mark, and a happy ending with a "whacky" twist is had.
For Steve Martin, Jacques Clouseau has been a bright light in an otherwise abysmally dark acting career post-"Bowfinger." Is he as good as Peter Sellers? No. And DeNiro didn't out-Godfather Marlon Brando, but nobody seemed to complain about that.
Martin does as best as he can to be funny with a shitty script (you can blame him for that detail as he was one of the co-writers which blows my mind as he is a very good at writing plays.) and terrible directing.
Jean Reno returns and while his character returns in physical form it doesn't return in spirit. Reno hasn't been this underwhelming since "Godzilla", actually I daresay he was far better in that film. Where Ponton actually served a purpose in the previous movie he has no such duty in this one but to bring in his two bratty children who attack Clouseau with karate moves in place of Burt Kwouk's Kato (Clouseau's Chinese manservant and sparring partner from past films.) Ultimately he doesn't do much of anything and is absent for a good chunk of the movie with no real explanation.
Emily Mortimer remains charming and cute as she was in the first movie and is almost more of a reason to watch this film than Martin.
The "Dream Team" is anything but featuring Yuki Matsuzaki as a Japanese guy with technological prowess (groundbreaking!), Andy Garcia pretends to be Italian, and Alfred Molina pretends to be British (that's a joke.)
John Cleese is actually a much more sensible choice for Chief Inspector Dreyfus than Kevin Kline ever was. Cleese is a vastly overexposed actor but he is really the closest thing to Herbert Lom's performance that there could be. He doesn't quite have the intensity or comedic timing of Lom, nor the penchant for hurting himself, but he makes it work.
It has its good points, Clouseau's miraculous solving of the case seems more realistic now but as a result it isn't funny like it was in the first. Also Clouseau gets his trademark hat which was noticeably missing from the first film.
Unfortunately most of the gags are tired (though there are some fairly competently written scenes where Lily Tomlin's character attempts to teach him political correctness) but it's mostly just sight-gags and slapstick that The 3 Stooges covered ages ago. It's either been done to death or just isn't funny with the occasional joke that slaps through the crack and accidently manages to make you chuckle.
You'll figure out who the thief is within the first 15 minutes of the film and there's barely even a single red herring that does anything to dissuade this. That represents pretty much all the storyline in this movie, which is handled as clumsily as possible.
The story takes place over a myriad of locales from Rome, The Vatican, Paris, and briefly Tokyo yet you never get the feeling you're seeing more than the same city at any point in the movie.
While the original remake of "The Pink Panther" was an unfairly despised film this film deserves all that hatred and then some. It's not the worst film you'll ever see but it is a very bad movie.
I give "The Pink Panther 2" a 2 out of 5.
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