Movie Review: "The Pink Panther" (2006)

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Movie: "The Pink Panther"
Director: Shawn Levy
Year: 2006
Rating: PG
Running Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

The bumbling Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin) is brought on to investigate the murder of billionaire Yves Gluant (Jason Statham) and the disappearance of his giant pink diamond known as the Pink Panther.

"The Pink Panther" is a modern day re-imagining of the 1963 film of the same name. It is directed by Shawn Levy, who is known for films such as "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Night at the Museum." It stars Steve Martin, who takes on the role of Inspector Clouseau that was made famous by Peter Sellers in the 60's. After the wealthy owner of a soccer team is murdered and his famous Pink Panther diamond is stolen, the power-climbing Chief Inspector Dreyfus, played by Kevin Kline, hopes to solve the case himself and get all the credit, but he can't do that with such a high profile victim because of the constant media attention. Therefore, he devises a plan to assign the worst inspector on the force, Jaques Clouseau, to the case as a distraction for the press while he secretly solves the case himself. Of course, Clouseau has an over-inflated sense of self worth, which leads to him fumbling and bumbling his way through the case and making a regular fool of himself.

This is a comedy loaded with slapstick, prat falls, and jokes entirely devoid of wit. This is never more clear than in the scene where Clouseau struggles to pronounce the word "hamburger," a joke that somehow manages to present itself more than once in the course of this rather short film. This all happens while Steve Martin uses a bad, over-exaggerated French accent, pretending he is unable to say even the simplest English words and phrases. Martin's Clouseau makes his character of Navin Johnson from the "The Jerk" seem like a Rhodes Scholar. For some reason, Beyoncé is also in this movie because her agent during the mid 2000's wanted her to become an actress for some reason????? and so she appears in this film in what we think was an effort to get the younger audience to watch this film because star power is the only thing that could possibly interest anyone in this dreadfully stupid movie. It's not like kids know who Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, and Jean Reno are.

When this series started back in the 60's, Clouseau was a secondary character, but Sellers performed it so well that he outshined his cast mates and was moved to the lead in the subsequent sequels. Martin, on the other hand, performs the part so poorly that we wish Clouseau would fade back into the background. We hate to say this because we love Steve Martin, but this incarnation of "The Pink Panther" should really be called "The Stink Panther" because it is so damn awful. You couldn't pay us to watch this movie again.

My Rating: 2/10
BigJ's Rating: 2/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 22%
Do we recommend this movie: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!