I really enjoy the old Pink Panther movies. Peter Sellers was a comedic genius. Steve Martin, I feel, is also a comedic genius, but in a completely different realm.

As much as I love Steve’s work, I was very skeptical when I heard he was doing a Panther remake. I feel so strongly about Sellers’ Clouseau, I was certain that Martin’s Couseau would not live up. Tammy really wanted to see the film and I was curious how it would measure up. I went in with low expectations and they were met… barely.

50% of Peter Sellers’ humor (especially in the Pather series) came from his accents. Clouseau’s outlandish French lives in the pantheon of funny accents. The other characters had decent accents (French, German, Russian, etc.) unlike most American movies in which any foreign character has a British accent.

In this new incarnation, Martin does have a few lines which attempt to make fun of his (poorly done) French accent. But seriously, how does “dehbuugahh” sound like a French person saying “hamburger”? To make Martin’s French sound more French, the other characters were given (surprise surprise) British accents rather than French. Kevin Kline, who plays Chief Inspector Dreyfus, sounds about as French as Madonna and I know he can do a flawless French accent thanks to his brilliant performance in “French Kiss”.

You can’t do the Pink Panther without doing some physical humor. While I’ve always thought this was Steve Martin’s forte, he didn’t really deliver as Clouseau. The best pratfalls were in the trailer. (This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine.) The movie was much more predictable than it’s predecessors. I found I was laughing, but I wasn’t laughing at the jokes. I was laughing at how bad the jokes were.

Tammy isn’t a big fan of comedies in the slap-stick/silly variety, but she is a huge fan of Martin’s later work in “family comedies”. She summed it up best when the lights came up. “That was really really bad.”

Sorry, Steve, but I’m afraid you struck out on this one. I give it two out of five grins.