Minkey Business

By J.C.

THE RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER

Directed by BLAKE EDWARDS

Screenplay by FRANK WALDMAN and BLAKE EDWARDS

At the time of the robbery, Inspector Jacques Clouseau was standing outside the bank, arguing with a beggar. The poor fellow was trying to earn a few centimes playing the accordion, while his pet monkey collected coins in a tin cup. Now you will recall from The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark that Clouseau has an immaculate and quite literal respect for the law. This is, in fact, why he is in uniform, on foot patrol, instead of dashing about in plain clothes and solving glamorous crimes. His strict adherence to the book, as well as an unshakable simple-mindedness and a fateful penchant for instigating catastrophe, has kept Clouseau from achieving his full status as a crime fighter. Give him his due and he would be right up there, somewhere between Arsene Lupin and the Green Hornet, battling the forces of evil--if he could only figure out who they were.

He has, characteristically, a great deal of trouble outside the bank. In his liquefied and wholly improbable French accent, he delivers a severe reprimand to the beggar and his "minkey," informing them that they constitute a commercial enterprise and require a license. Since this all takes place while the bank is being robbed, it is subsequently suggested to Clouseau by his chief inspector that the beggar may well have been a lookout. Dumbfounded, Clouseau does not mention that while the robbers made their getaway, he picked up a stray bit of currency that the brigands had dropped from the bundle and even stopped traffic for the getaway car.

What a gag like this lacks in novelty Director Blake Edwards can make up for with the trim velocity of his timing, the precision engineering of each comic contretemps. Then there is Peter Sellers as Clouseau. This idiot-savant gumshoe is one of Sellers' best creations, a creature of impervious stupidity and unyielding, if ever tenuous, dignity. Clouseau can vacuum up the entire contents of a hotel room, drive trucks into a swimming pool, inundate his quarters with bubble bath, and still react with the mere suggestion of embarrassment, as if he had just sneezed a little too loudly. These days Sellers can most regularly be found on television, pitching for a major airline from behind a variety of disguises, so it is good to have him here in a comic role that is generous and comfortable.

The Pink Panther begins with an intricate and extremely dexterous jewel robbery, a sequence that Edwards stages with great finesse. The Pink Panther is a priceless jewel, and Clouseau must find out what happened to it. His major suspect--who, needless to say, is probably innocent--is the suave cat burglar Sir Charles Litton (Christopher Plummer), a character amusingly and lovingly modeled on Gary Grant in Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief. Litton must track down the real culprits while Clouseau stalks him. There is little question of ever catching Litton, of course, but the unnatural disasters that Clouseau's pursuit can bring might make any man cautious.

Edwards has directed some smart Hollywood entertainments (the under rated Darling Lili, for example) and two of the three previous Clouseau excursions. This one is the most raucous of the lot, and possibly the best. It may not be as wild or inventive as Woody Allen or Mel Brooks or the Monty Python team. But The Return of the Pink Panther is fully as funny, in its own brassy, uncomplicated way, and that is probably what counts.

The film even offers a bonus -- a few minutes of the Pink Panther, a creature that is a sort of mascot for the series, cavorting in animation along with the titles. The art work was done by the Richard Williams Studio and is a spectacular all on its own.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.