Video/DVD Review: Trail of the Pink Panther
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this movie has a salacious scene
of nude young women (why nude? Your guess is as good as ours)
stomping grapes at a vineyard. Also scattered profanity (in
French and English), previously unknown in this series. A scene
of attempted suicide (by a young Clouseau) is played for
laughs.
Families can talk about how they think this movie compares to
the others.
After Peter Sellers died in 1980, director Blake Edwards announced he had enough outtakes and unused Sellers material to concoct new Pink Panther comedy starring the comic genius. Once again the sacred Pink Panther diamond is stolen. The mythical Mideast country of Lugash sends a demand to Paris for Clouseau to recover it. A handful of scenes -- some very funny, some overbearing -- show Sellers' Inspector Clouseau visiting his favorite disguise shop, starting fires in his office, checking into (and wrecking) a hotel, and getting stuck in an airline toilet while bandaged head to foot. Then, news comes that Clouseau's plane has disappeared. A chic French TV reporter, Marie (Joanna Lumley), starts interviewing everyone who knew Clouseau, including characters from earlier movies, like the aristocratic burglar Sir Charles Lytton (David Niven).
TRAIL OF THE PINK PANTHER is a strange, mutant tribute/exploitation of the movie. Kids who are undiscriminating may laugh a few times. Edwards meant well, but it just doesn't work.
The cast reunion mainly provides an excuse to show plentiful excerpts from the previous films in the series. This is a sort of thing that long-running TV series do occasionally when they get lazy, the dreaded "clip show." The question of who has stolen the Pink Panther diamond is simply dropped, and the clips more than anything remind us that Peter Sellers wasn't really around for this production at all.
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