RE: The Last Movie You Watched
August 14, 2019 at 8:58 pm
(This post was last modified: August 14, 2019 at 10:10 pm by Rev. Rye.)
This week in the Deep Hurting Project: The Son of the Pink Panther.
While I usually don't go too much into the director's past in the Deep Hurting Project, I think I kind of have to here: If there's two words one can use to describe Blake Edwards' career, it would be "Diminishing Returns." He peaked pretty bloody early as a director, and I'd say that his high point was 1964's A Shot in the Dark. He takes the less-than competent Inspector Clouseau provided by the earlier Pink Panther, and turns him into a comedic legend in his own right. Eventually, after the failure of Darling Lili, and a bunch of other unremarkable films, he ended up making three more Pink Panther films with Peter Sellers, before Sellers died in 1980. In addition to some good films like the masterpiece Victor/Victoria and the passable 10, he also made a pair of Pink Panther films consisting largely of unused footage of Peter Sellers and newly filmed linking material. Then, after a string of mediocre films, he decided to dip back into the Pink Panther one last time. It was the last film he ever did.
You know the opening sequences that they made for the series? The ones distinctive enough that they made hundreds of shorts based around the Pink Panther character? The one who's still used in advertisements for Owens insulation to this day? Well, here it is:
And it looks more technically magnificent than the old ones, especially with the mixed-medium, and Henry Mancini handing off the baton to the Panther is a poignant touch, especially since he would die shortly after the film's release, but the fact that the inspector looks more like Peter Sellers' natural look than Roberto Benigni aside, it's just not funny.
And once the movie proper starts, one problem becomes abundantly clear: I've only seen the first 15 minutes of the film, but all the performances are, at best, lackluster. The terrorists are like a third-rate version of the gang from A Fish Called Wanda, the Princess looks nothing like her father and fails to give us anything interesting to compensate for the fact that her role in the story could easily be filled by a bag of diamonds (indeed, in the original film, it WAS), Herbert Lom feels like he's slumming it (I can only assume that not having to deal with Clouseau for years allowed him to mellow out, but still), and, amazingly, Robert Benigni, playing Clouseau's bastard son, Jacques Gambrelli, wears out his welcome remarkably quickly. Hell, he sounds like he's playing Borat, except without the crazy shit that made Borat funny. Bear in mind, that accent is his natural Italian accent, and somehow, it sounds like Borat here. I know he can certainly be funny with the right material (read: movies directed by Jim Jarmusch), but it's safe to assume this is not the right material.
I know I've only watched the first 15 minutes of this 92 minute and 29 second film so far, but I strongly suspect that this may take the Megatron Award for Bad Comedy from Bio-Dome. And also, on the off chance that nothing in the rest of it inspires me to write a follow-up post, I'll just leave this little tidbit here: Claudia Cardinale (who appeared in the first film as Princess Dala) appears as Roberto Benigni's mother: Maria Gambrelli, Elke Sommers' character in A Shot in the Dark.
Edit: YES! Dreyfus' eye tic finally returns when Benigni says "leur." I'm not sure if accents work that way, but still.
While I usually don't go too much into the director's past in the Deep Hurting Project, I think I kind of have to here: If there's two words one can use to describe Blake Edwards' career, it would be "Diminishing Returns." He peaked pretty bloody early as a director, and I'd say that his high point was 1964's A Shot in the Dark. He takes the less-than competent Inspector Clouseau provided by the earlier Pink Panther, and turns him into a comedic legend in his own right. Eventually, after the failure of Darling Lili, and a bunch of other unremarkable films, he ended up making three more Pink Panther films with Peter Sellers, before Sellers died in 1980. In addition to some good films like the masterpiece Victor/Victoria and the passable 10, he also made a pair of Pink Panther films consisting largely of unused footage of Peter Sellers and newly filmed linking material. Then, after a string of mediocre films, he decided to dip back into the Pink Panther one last time. It was the last film he ever did.
You know the opening sequences that they made for the series? The ones distinctive enough that they made hundreds of shorts based around the Pink Panther character? The one who's still used in advertisements for Owens insulation to this day? Well, here it is:
And it looks more technically magnificent than the old ones, especially with the mixed-medium, and Henry Mancini handing off the baton to the Panther is a poignant touch, especially since he would die shortly after the film's release, but the fact that the inspector looks more like Peter Sellers' natural look than Roberto Benigni aside, it's just not funny.
And once the movie proper starts, one problem becomes abundantly clear: I've only seen the first 15 minutes of the film, but all the performances are, at best, lackluster. The terrorists are like a third-rate version of the gang from A Fish Called Wanda, the Princess looks nothing like her father and fails to give us anything interesting to compensate for the fact that her role in the story could easily be filled by a bag of diamonds (indeed, in the original film, it WAS), Herbert Lom feels like he's slumming it (I can only assume that not having to deal with Clouseau for years allowed him to mellow out, but still), and, amazingly, Robert Benigni, playing Clouseau's bastard son, Jacques Gambrelli, wears out his welcome remarkably quickly. Hell, he sounds like he's playing Borat, except without the crazy shit that made Borat funny. Bear in mind, that accent is his natural Italian accent, and somehow, it sounds like Borat here. I know he can certainly be funny with the right material (read: movies directed by Jim Jarmusch), but it's safe to assume this is not the right material.
I know I've only watched the first 15 minutes of this 92 minute and 29 second film so far, but I strongly suspect that this may take the Megatron Award for Bad Comedy from Bio-Dome. And also, on the off chance that nothing in the rest of it inspires me to write a follow-up post, I'll just leave this little tidbit here: Claudia Cardinale (who appeared in the first film as Princess Dala) appears as Roberto Benigni's mother: Maria Gambrelli, Elke Sommers' character in A Shot in the Dark.
Edit: YES! Dreyfus' eye tic finally returns when Benigni says "leur." I'm not sure if accents work that way, but still.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.