Movie Report: The Pink Panther (2006)

Well, I am possibly on a Steve Martin “kick” since I’ve had watched three of his movies in the last year (Shopgirl, The Man with Two Brains, and The Out-of-Towners). And since I also just watched a Peter Sellers Pink Panther movie (The Return of the Pink Panther), it was inevitable that I would eventually come to watch this film. As it so happens, I bought it last year about this time–since the Lutherans for Life Sale is next weekend, almost to the date. And since I have watched four films over the last three weeks, I should definitely go to that sale and buy a dozen more.

At any rate, after a big soccer match, someone kills the French soccer coach (played briefly by Jason Statham) who owns and wears the Pink Panther, a diamond that’s the source of French pride and good luck for the soccer team. The chief inspector, played by Kevin Kline, wants to bring into the investigation the most incompetent gendarme in the country to “lead” the investigation–that is, to be the focus of the media attention while Kline and his team work behind the scenes to solve the crime. He (Kline’s character named Dreyfus) selects Clouseau and has a loyal Parisian police officer (played by Jean Reno who had the only real French accent for the film) to keep an eye on the suspects which includes the American pop star fiancee of the coach (played by Beyonce).

So we get a set of fish-out-of-water bit of slapstick with set pieces where Clouseau bumbles about Paris, he makes outlandish mistakes, but with the help of his assistant played by Emily Mortimer, they dramatically make the correct arrest at a big party held at the Presidential mansion before Dreyfus can mistakenly arrest a Chinese official whom his team believes is the real killer.

You know, from his writings (such as Pure Drivel and Shopgirl) and some of his movies such as Bowfinger and the aforementioned Shopgirl, one might get the sense that Martin is a thinking man’s humorist, and he does have that capacity. But he’s also made a career on being a wild and crazy guy, and his biggest films have been more slapstick than Twain.

At any rate, an amusing enough film, and I laughed at a couple of things. One turn from the Sellers films: Instead of his man attacking him to keep him fresh, Martin’s Clouseau says he’s going to keep Reno’s character on his toes by attacking him unexpectedly, and he does this several times in the film and Reno’s character offhandedly deflects it.

So the film includes Emily Mortimer….

She is a British actress with some exposure across the pond, and she is the lead in the British version of The Bookshop which is also atop my video cabinets. That, coupled with the fact that I’m familiar with the lead actress, might lead me to watch it sooner rather than later.

Lovely.