The Pink Panther: Critic Reviews

I am a huge fan of Steve Martin and did like him as Clouseau. The film didn't live up to expectations, but his likeability did.

Director Shawn Levy and his team squander Martin's old-timey hipster appeal.

Despite a witty performance by Steve Martin, much of The Pink Panther feels like trying on old clothes that no longer fit.

Even if you give Sellers the edge in facial expressions, Martin is his equal in mangled verbiage.

The Pink Panther ees, how you say, ze real dog.

Well, at least Steve Martin's trying to be funny again.

The most that can be said for this strenuously bland reconstitution is that Steve Martin was clearly alive during filming. But just how alive, unfortunately, is at issue.

Under his coat, the Panther must be pink with embarrassment.

it doesn't stink. Au contraire: It's good. Maybe not a masterwork, but good enough to redeem the series and its intrepid, mustachioed twit.

The most effective way of reviewing the new Pink Panther movie would be to issue two reviews. One would be a simply worded warning to adults: Skip it if you can.

It's not quite on the high comedic plane of 'Do you have a license for that moon-key?' But AM-bourg-airs will do. Just ask the kids.

At every moment in the movie, I was aware that Peter Sellers was Clouseau, and Steve Martin was not. I hadn't realized how thoroughly Sellers and Edwards had colonized my memory.

We responded to Sellers' Clouseau because his foolishness and fakery echoed something deeply human as well as hilarious. We respond to Martin mostly because he's a funny guy in a silly mustache, cutting up and trying to make us laugh.

Alas, this joyless affair doesn't have a clou.

The Pink Panther does justice to the old Blake Edwards/Peter Sellers crime comedies -- it's almost as good as the best of those films, far better than the worst -- but doesn't depend on viewers being familiar with them.

The Pink Panther is like a pratfall that doesn't work. It should be funny, but it hurts more than it should.

The Pink Panther doesn't mess around. It goes south in a hurry.

Steve Martin's foray as Inspector Clouseau exhibits bursts of wild-and-craziness, but hardly enough to sustain even its relatively brief running time.

You could wander into The Pink Panther for any 15-minute period, laugh a couple of times and leave without wondering for a moment how things will turn out.

Brilliant Martin, an intellectual comic who started his career slumming in sophomoric slapstick, is entirely too uptight to be genius Sellers' greatest creation.

As if the curse of the Pink Panther wasn't dire enough, Martin's Clouseau is haunted by more than the ghost of Peter Sellers. He's also being trailed by the old Steve Martin.

The trouble is the movie has little to offer except Martin's set pieces, which feel off-the-cuff, and, even in the roughly one-in-four times they work, far too drawn out.

This movie leaves us with the stale whiff of fake nostalgia and something even more odoriferous: the smell of money.