Movie Review: “The Pink Panther 2″
Steve Martin and John Cleese in “The Pink Panther 2.”
Rating: 15
Such an abundance of talent showed up for “The Pink Panther 2,” it’s difficult to stomach just how pedestrian and unfunny this second Steve Martin stab at Inspector Clouseau turned out. But when the 2006 remake of the Peter Sellers classic grossed nearly $160 million worldwide with barely two laughs in its running time, why make something good when it clearly doesn’t matter?
In this iteration, the giant diamond known as the Pink Panther, along with several other antiquities, get stolen by an evil mastermind. It’s up to Clouseau and a team of international investigators (led by Andy Garcia, Alfred Molina and Bollywood superstar Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) to find it, but this trifling plot is just a set-up for the rote slapstick sequences Martin executes with the kind of enthusiasm he might bring to a tax audit.
“The Pink Panther 2” gets off to a terrible start when John Cleese shows up as Chief Inspector Dreyfus, taking over for Kevin Kline. Cleese, of course, is the architect of the finest comedic French accent in film history, but director Harald Zwart does not put the “Holy Grail” of funny accents to use — Cleese plays Dreyfus with his own stately British voice. That’s not just missing an opportunity — Zwart’s cinematic incompetence rises to the level of comedic malpractice.
The list of fine talent being smothered in “Pink Panther 2” is long and depressing: Lily Tomlin, Emily Mortimer, Jean Reno, Garcia, Molina, Cleese and Jeremy Irons all step up to collect checks. And Bachchan, who was such an incandescent presence in “Bride and Prejudice,” is given little to do other than look pretty — the same fate Beyonce Knowles suffered in the previous film.
As for Martin, he shoulders much of the blame for this. Not only does he seem like he just doesn’t care, but he shares a co-writing credit on the screenplay. The man who wrote “L.A. Story,” “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” “Roxanne,” “The Jerk” and “Shopgirl” can do so much better.
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