Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)

I love this movie so much

The greatest movie ever made..!

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Fifth in the "Pink Panther" series (sixth if you count 1968's "Inspector Clouseau", which starred Alan Arkin) opens with a promising set-up--Clouseau, who is marked for assassination by the millionaire businessman who heads up the French mafia, is mistaken for dead--but fails to come up with anything remotely funny following the introductions. Director/producer/co-screenwriter Blake Edwards (who also gets a story credit!) does some uncharacteristically lazy work here. Peter Sellers can't even get laughs dressed in transvestite's clothes or disguised as a mafia godfather. Edwards must have been relieved to close the chapter on Clouseau after this abysmal installment, though he was persuaded to piece together another film (1982's "Trail of the Pink Panther") from series outtakes after Sellers' demise. * from ****

To demonstrate his powerfulness, crime boss Philippe Douvier (Robert Webber) decides to kill Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers). His men kill a transvestite instead and mistakenly believes that Clouseau is actually dead. The former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) is brought back to give the eulogy and lure out the killers. Meanwhile Clouseau and his man-servant Cato Fong (Burt Kwouk) aim to track down his would-be assassin.The best thing about this Pink Panther sequel is the return of Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, and Burt Kwouk. The trio represents the best combination in the Pink Panther franchise. The movie is kind of boring whenever the three isn't on screen. The opening is problematic because of that fact. One of the three should be on screen at least 95% of the time. They are chuckle worthy just by being there. The rest of the cast is forgettable and unimportant.

The Pink Panther series, as with many such outstanding comedy formulae, hit a peak and went into inevitable decline. The characters and the way they played off each other could always be relied upon to unleash a wild stream of gags, but the trouble is there wasn't enough flexibility in the format, and without novel situations each new movie began to resemble the last.Just as the previous picture (The Pink Panther Strikes Again) spoofs the James Bond franchise, Revenge of the Pink Panther takes off the gangster movies of the decade. It is a little heavier on plot than most Pink Panther pictures, and perhaps a little haphazard in its construction (numerous outtakes would later make up a large chunk of the follow-up, Trail of the Pink Panther). The jokes do not come quite so thick and fast as they used to, which is a shame because director Blake Edwards only really thrived on the slapstick comedy. Thankfully this is still of a high calibre, and there are some great examples of those trademark exaggerated gags, such as the assassin tripping on a baton then falling through several floors. A pratfall is never just a pratfall in an Edwards comedy.But altogether the comedy is on smaller scale than it was in the previous picture, which on the plus side allows for more business from main man Peter Sellers. The story here focuses a lot on Clouseau's mastery of disguises, giving several opportunities for Sellers to try out different comedy mannerisms. The Swedish seadog routine is one of the funniest scenes of any Panther movie. Sellers still had his brilliance at timing and silly voices, although his energy and enthusiasm were clearly beginning to wane.Sellers passed away before another Pink Panther movie could be made. However, as Trail of the Pink Panther and Son of the Pink Panther showed, the flogging of this dead horse continued even after the literal death of the star, a star without whom the series could not have existed in the first place. Still, while far from perfect Revenge of the Pink Panther gives us a final opportunity to see him in one of his greatest roles, before the series really started to turn bad

In Inspector Clouseau Peter Sellers created one of the greatest comedy characters and he and Blake Edwards reunite for a fifth Pink Panther film featuring the inept Frenchman.After Return and Strikes again the Pink Panther series began to falter at this point as the character of Clouseau began to get more and more extreme and the plots of the film began to get more and more like a James Bond spoof with the ending in particular being totally manic.One thing that is nice about this film is that we see Clouseau walk off into the distance and this is made more poignant by the fact that we now know it would be the last time Sellers played the character. The series should have ended while it was still pretty much at the top of it's game rather than being followed up by the trilogy of films Edwards made in order to try to revitalise the franchise after Seller's death.