"The Pink Panther": Let's hope this is Clouseau's swan song
It's impossible to hate a film in which Steve Martin and Jean Reno perform an interpretive dance while dressed in floral bodysuits. (Many movies, for that matter, could well benefit from a scene involving interpretive dance and floral bodysuits.) So let me say that Shawn Levy's rehash of "The Pink Panther" is not entirely bad. Then again, it certainly isn't very good, either.
The role of the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, complete with hammy French accent, was created by Peter Sellers in Blake Edwards' 1964 film "The Pink Panther." Sellers and Edwards made a handful of sequels, and the franchise continued even after Sellers' death in 1980, though it eventually petered out, so to speak.
Now it's back after a long absence, with the characters of Clouseau (Martin) and his boss, Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline), recycled and virtually everything else re-invented. (Luckily, Henry Mancini's deliciously slinky "Pink Panther" score returns, showing no signs of age.)
When a world-famous soccer coach is murdered, Inspector Clouseau is hired as a fall guy to investigate the crime. With the help of Gendarme Gilbert Ponton (Reno) and Clouseau's sweet, bespectacled secretary, Nicole (Emily Mortimer), various suspects are identified, chief among them the coach's pop-star girlfriend, Xania (Beyoncé Knowles).
All of this is interspersed with pratfalls (by my reckoning, the first one comes at about the 90-second mark), silly faces, goofball French accents, accidental electrocution, unlucky bicyclists and flaming mojitos, one of which is consumed by Clive Owen in a slick but pointless cameo as Secret Agent 006. Ultimately it doesn't add up to anything, and Levy mostly succeeds only in passing the time. The screenplay, written by Len Blum and Martin, feels like a series of bits rather than a story, and the actors do shtick rather than creating characters.
But shtick is no stranger to the "Pink Panther" series, and some of it is actually pretty funny. Just some of it, mind you: Kline is surprisingly dull, Knowles isn't remotely stretched by playing a gorgeous pop diva, and Levy doesn't seem to know what to do with Kristin Chenowith, who totters through the movie alertly, as if awaiting a cue that never comes. Others register nicely, particularly Mortimer, who demonstrates a bug-eyed, loopy charm.
And, after the dreariness that was "Shopgirl," there are pleasures in seeing Martin returning to his comedy roots, even in as uneven an endeavor as this. His Clouseau purses his lips and spits out his lines, certain that he's saying things just the right way. (In a discussion of women's shoes, his pronunciation of pumps — "pooomps" — is perhaps the funniest thing in the movie.)
It's an entertaining performance, but let's hope that it's Inspector Clouseau's swan song. "It's an idiom," mutters a suspect to Clouseau, who's questioned a figure of speech. "You, sir, are the idiom!" intones Martin. Though not a total disaster, this "Pink Panther" is too often, shall we say, idiomatic. It's time to let the Inspector rest in peace.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com
"The Pink Panther," with Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, Jean Reno, Emily Mortimer, Henry Czerny, Beyonc Knowles. Directed by Shawn Levy, from a screenplay by Len Blum and Martin, based on characters created by Maurice Richlin and Blake Edwards and on the "Pink Panther" films by Edwards. 92 minutes. Rated PG for occasional crude and suggestive humor and language. Several theaters.