"Pink Panther 2" is not a great movie, but it is not as bad as some say. A new villain, The Tornado, snatches away the Pink Panther diamond. But The Tornado has also swiped other big-name treasures: The Magna Carta, The Shroud of Turin, and the Emperor's Sword. It is an international "Dream Team" of detectives, not just Inspector Jacques Clouseau, who investigate. Joining Steve Martin (Clouseau) are some accomplished actors: Andy Garcia plays (very well) Italian businessman Vicenzo, Alfred Molina is British inspector Pepperidge, and Yuki Matsuzaki is Japanese electronics expert Kenji. The odd lady out, and a very key person, is the exotic and very pretty Sonia (Aishwarya Rai). She is an expert on criminology and, specifically, The Tornado.
***The following may contain spoilers***
Martin is no Peter Sellers. The Englishman ever had poise and charm as Clouseau: Something about him fit so well into a French policeman's uniform or a trench coat. Sellers carried himself well when not tripping over something, and when he did, he seemed oblivious. His manner of speaking was deliberate yet natural: sophisticated, arrogant, comedic aplomb, if you will, and one reason he was funny was that he was almost always serious. Martin's Clouseau is also egotistical and certainly has presence, but not the same poise. He is too goofy. He is taller and gawkier, older, and more nervous. He also gets depressed when he screws up. Martin is fairly funny when he engages in French-to-English mispronunciation dialogue, but I take Sellers' smooth manner over Martin's verbose. In fairness, part of the problem is the script. Attempting to make the movie funny, the screenwriters concocted a substantial amount of cheap lines, especially politically incorrect dialogue and behavior, for Martin, having him contradict his political correctness mentor Mrs. Berenger (Lily Tomlin) by ogling women and making a bad joke about his "yellow" friend Kenji and sushi. He embarrasses a comrade in front of others by saying "I'm sorry you cannot satisfy your wife," and of his secretary, he says to a group of detectives: "Nicole is here to service your needs...use her in any way you wish." The low sexual humor, of which there is plenty, is not always terrible; but if you go there, limit it and assign it to characters other than Clouseau. Blake Edwards' Clouseau had wit, not cheap humor, including in romantic situations.
As for the slapstick and other humor, it is often predictable and silly. In a less-than-stellar scene at the film's beginning, Clouseau bumbles a parking ticket issuance in a hint of more forced humor to come. Still, there is enough here for viewers to laugh at and enjoy, exerting the right to relax. The same restaurant is accidentally burned down twice by guess who [?], and Clouseau has a meeting with the Pope that ends up with Clouseau encountering some fearsome heights. There is a lot of crashing, bashing, and banging; at some point, this is overdone. Vicenzo and Chief Inspector Dreyfus (John Cleese) have a few good moments of humor. An encounter between The Dream Team and a falsely accused Tornado (played by Jeremy Irons) is fairly funny. This is one of a few moderately good twists concerning The Tornado and those in the villain's orbit.
My favorite aspect of the movie is the romantic tension between Clouseau and his sweetheart of a secretary, Nicole (Emily Mortimer). She is the most compelling person of the film. Finding it difficult to express their love for each other, Clouseau and Nicole still feel it, and this makes for a good climax (seriously, no pun intended). Nicole is very beautiful and so is Sonia, who has a sexier look and, for a while, eyes for Clouseau.
But the reality is that the overall script does not match the four great "Pink Panther" works. In the original series of movies, things started going downhill in "Revenge of the Pink Panther" (and continued much further in the follow-ups without Sellers). Sellers could not salvage "Revenge," in which there was too much klutzy humor including overuse of Cato. But Cato fighting is better than fighting with a colleague's young karate kids, as Martin does here. Overall, the silly overrides the witty or sophisticated in "Pink Panther 2."
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