Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)

 

The last time wasn't the charm, alas. I mean, even if you love Peter Sellers or the character of the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, this one isn't even funny for more than 90 percent of the time.

A shame. Maybe the ideas were truly gone, or maybe Peter Sellers' deteriorating health and mental state just didn't allow him to work efficiently.

Ah well.

Chief Inspector Clouseau is minding his business when unbeknownst to him a businessman/crimelord decides to set an example to his head office in New York. The reason is that New York claims he has become soft and they can't use him anymore in their drug trade. So of course eliminating the best known and most notorious police officer in the country would seem like a good deal. But through a series of mishaps, it turns out the wrong person died and now the world believes Clouseau to be in fact dead. 

But because Clouseau is world famous, they need a great detective to solve this crime. So they bring back Dreyfus from the mental institution. Never mind the fact that there is a film in which he wanted to erase the world and erased himself, this film totally skips over continuity in that regard. 

And then it's off to Hong Kong for a meeting of gangsters which Clouseau hopes to thwart, but the how and why is a bit shady.

See, this film is a bit of a mess. Motivations make little sense, characters reappear willy-nilly and the resolutions are rather shoddy. Now that could be sort of forgiven had the film actually been funny, but it is at times painfully not so. There's hardly any slapstick because Sellers couldn't do it anymore and the reliance on stupid disguises is just a crutch but doesn't lead to any giggles. 

It almost hurts to say this, but it's true: this one is just plain bad. I mean, if your best joke is a fart in an elevator, then you know the bar is incredibly low. 

Not much more to say, alas. There are quite a number of excellent to decent films in this franchise, but you can absolutely skip this one.