Steve
Martin reprises Peter Sellers’s bumbling Inspector Clouseau character. He’s not
bad, but the screenplay he coauthored eventually falters.
The only comedy album I ever
bought was Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy back in 1978. One bit I
still remember is Martin imitating a Frenchman saying, “We don’t even have our
own language. All we have is this stupid ac-cent.” I guess there’s still
something funny to me about the idea, so well promulgated by Hollywood movies,
that everyone in the world speaks English, badly. Who knew that Martin
would be using his earlier-perfected bad ac-cent nearly three decades
later to essay a role made famous by Peter Sellers. Given that Sellers, who
last played bumbling Inspector Clouseau in that same year of 1978, is dead,
Martin does a pretty good job of getting the laughs to be had, as does Kevin
Kline (with an even worse accent) in Herbert Lom’s old role of Inspector
Dreyfus.
Reprised from the Sellers films (all directed by Blake Edwards) are
Henry Mancini’s famous theme, the plot revolving around the stolen Pink Panther
diamond, the slapstick humor, and Dreyfus’s contempt for Clouseau. The uneven
screenplay, cowritten by Martin, is new. The gags feel strained when they get
too elaborate. The simpler ones are better. For example, when Clouseau learns
that a dying man’s last words, before being shot, were “It’s you!” he tells his
right-hand man (Jean Reno) to find everyone in Paris named “Yu.” The film
falters in the second half for two related reasons. First, Clouseau is made to
suddenly realize he is a laughingstock. Then, he is made to wise up and quite
cleverly solve the crime. The idea behind the character, and the humor, is that
he is always confident but never competent.
posted 9/11/13
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