This is the sixth film in the Pink Panther series, and fifth with Blake Edwards, Peter Sellers and company at the helm. The plot here has the head of the international drug smuggling operation in France attempting to kill Chief Inspector Clouseau. The purpose is to convince his mafia partners in America that he is the tough nut he was supposed to be. Herbert Lom is here as commissioner Dreyfus, and his allergy to Clouseau gets worse which provides some extra comedy.
The comedy here is good but waning quite a bit from the earliest two films. After watching this movie a third after so many years - following viewing of the earlier films, it becomes apparent how the comedy becomes less and less with succeeding plots. It occurred to me that Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers might have taken a different tact in succeeding films. The plots are all being developed around Clouseau. That's a little bit like some TV sitcoms, when succeeding shows focus more on the main character. And, in time, they peter out when there's not much more to learn about or to focus on the main character.
But then, I remembered some other film series that were very successful - going back a few decades. The Boston Blackie movies of the 1930s-1940s, and the Philo Vance series, and the Thin Man series with Nick and Nora Charles. The latter, especially, was a comedy-crime series. Or, how about all the Agatha Christie Poirot films that David Suchet perfected as Hercule Poirot? While not comedies, they were always engrossing mysteries and they often had a little humor.
So, instead of bleeding everything out of the character of Jacque Clouseau in this series, why didn't the creators go back to some sort of good mystery plot and then bring Clouseau in with his bumbling to solve it? In a way, the second film - "A Shot in the Dark" did that, while also introducing a lot more about the character of Clouseau. I think the series could have kept going - even with a right replacement after Sellers' death, if the subsequent films had the mystique and settings of the original film, with Clouseau then coming to solve a case. In the Thin Man series, and with Hercule Poirot, there's always a fresh case, a different crime to solve, and the main character goes about it in his usual way, but always with different action. So, there would have been different situations for Clouseau's bumbling and comedy
Well, that was a thought anyway - based on some other vary successful ways that didn't seem to wear so thin so fast. As it turned out, this was Sellers last film anyway, because he died of a heart attack two years later - at the young age of 54. I'm glad we had the wonderful output of comedy that he provided, and I suspect where he is now there may be some heavenly laughter.
The comedy here is good but waning quite a bit from the earliest two films. After watching this movie a third after so many years - following viewing of the earlier films, it becomes apparent how the comedy becomes less and less with succeeding plots. It occurred to me that Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers might have taken a different tact in succeeding films. The plots are all being developed around Clouseau. That's a little bit like some TV sitcoms, when succeeding shows focus more on the main character. And, in time, they peter out when there's not much more to learn about or to focus on the main character.
But then, I remembered some other film series that were very successful - going back a few decades. The Boston Blackie movies of the 1930s-1940s, and the Philo Vance series, and the Thin Man series with Nick and Nora Charles. The latter, especially, was a comedy-crime series. Or, how about all the Agatha Christie Poirot films that David Suchet perfected as Hercule Poirot? While not comedies, they were always engrossing mysteries and they often had a little humor.
So, instead of bleeding everything out of the character of Jacque Clouseau in this series, why didn't the creators go back to some sort of good mystery plot and then bring Clouseau in with his bumbling to solve it? In a way, the second film - "A Shot in the Dark" did that, while also introducing a lot more about the character of Clouseau. I think the series could have kept going - even with a right replacement after Sellers' death, if the subsequent films had the mystique and settings of the original film, with Clouseau then coming to solve a case. In the Thin Man series, and with Hercule Poirot, there's always a fresh case, a different crime to solve, and the main character goes about it in his usual way, but always with different action. So, there would have been different situations for Clouseau's bumbling and comedy
Well, that was a thought anyway - based on some other vary successful ways that didn't seem to wear so thin so fast. As it turned out, this was Sellers last film anyway, because he died of a heart attack two years later - at the young age of 54. I'm glad we had the wonderful output of comedy that he provided, and I suspect where he is now there may be some heavenly laughter.