(Credit: Amazon.com)
Directed by
Blake Edwards
Cast:
Peter Sellers …. Chief Insp. Jacques Clouseau (archive footage)
David Niven …. Sir Charles Litton
Herbert Lom …. Chief Insp. Charles Dreyfus
Richard Mulligan …. Clouseau’s Father
Joanna Lumley …. Marie Jouvet
Capucine …. Lady Simone Litton
Robert Loggia …. Bruno Langois
Harvey Korman …. Prof. Auguste Balls
Burt Kwouk …. Cato Fong
Graham Stark …. Hercule Lajoy
Peter Arne …. Col. Bufoni
André Maranne …. Sergeant Francois Duval
Ronald Fraser …. Dr. Longet
Leonard Rossiter …. Super-Intendant Quinlan
Marne Maitland …. Deputy Comissioner Lasorde
The Movie:
While watching Trail of the Pink Panther, you notice it feels a lot like a series finale to a popular sitcom. It doesn’t really feel as if it has anything to do with the rest of the series, but instead just features a bunch of highlights to make you remember why you loved the show in the first place. It’s funny in places, but it’s also wholly unsatisfying. In 1982, Peter Sellers had been dead for two years. Just before his death, he had been planning on making another Panther, but that never came to pass. Trying desperately to come up with yet another sequel to the popular Pink Panther series, Director Blake Edwards decided to not let Sellers’ death stop him.
Taking outtakes from The Pink Panther Strikes Again and Revenge of the Pink Panther, Edwards fashioned an entire script around unseen footage to try and milk the Peter Sellers name one more time. The film he ended up with is nearly able to do that, but runs out of steam about half way through. From that point the film really just becomes little more than a highlight reel.
The “plot”, if you can call it that, deals with the Pink Panther diamond once again getting stolen. Clouseau is once again called in on the case, and shenanigans start up right away. Upon closer inspection though, the scenes themselves never feel totally natural. An extended sequence in which Clouseau dances a goofy rendition of Singin’ in the Rain was already seen in a shorter version in The Pink Panther Strikes Again. The three clueless Scotland Yard agents whom Clouseau meets up with are also from Strikes Again.
The film totally begins to fall apart when Edwards runs out of footage we haven’t seen before. A plane carrying Clouseau vanishes, leading reporter Marie Jouvet (Joanna Lumley) to try and find out what happened to him. For the rest of the film, Jouvet goes about interviewing characters from the previous Panther films, including David Niven’s the Phantom and Burt Kwouk’s Cato to learn more about the Inspector. This trip down memory lane is complete with clips from all of the previous films.
This had to be horribly frustrating for audiences expecting a new adventure from Clouseau. Edwards tries to take up the slack with Herbert Lom’s Chief Inspector Dreyfus and a sequence with Richard Mulligan playing Clouseau’s father. Lom is as funny here as he has ever been during the duration of the entire series. The actor has always played an awesome foil for Clouseau and it’s too bad that Sellers and he couldn’t have had one more scene together. A scene where Lom jumps unflinchingly into a pool full of Jell-O is definitely a film highlight. The Richard Mulligan sequence is ok, but not really that funny. Edwards puts together a flashback sequence recalling Clouseau’s earlier days, but it all rings very false. By the end of the film, you can tell the entire exercise was a mistake to begin with.
Edwards would try again and again to churn out Pink Panther sequels, but the magic just simply ended when Sellers passed on. The director stated Trail of the Pink Panther was a tribute to the actor, but it’s hard to see the film as anything but a cash grab. The sequences with Sellers are quite funny, but nothing could substitute for having the real thing, live and kicking (and falling, and tripping, and exploding).
Score: 4.0/10
The DVD:
The Video
The movie looks fine, with there being no obvious signs of degradation. The film is presented in Anamorphic Widescreen with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1.
The Audio
The audio is also good. There’s nothing particularly special about the track, but it’s not offensive. The film’s sound is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1.
SPECIAL FEATURES: Trailer, Photo Gallery.
Theatrical Trailer – Watching this trailer, you can see that Clouseau is hardly in the film. Normally trailers get you hyped for a film, this doesn’t help at all.
Photo Gallery
Score: 1.0/10
