Curse of the Pink Panther

Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)

Runtime: 110 minutes

Directed by: Blake Edwards

Starring: Ted Wass, the returning faces from previous installments

From: United Artists

While this franchise went down the toilet in the 80’s-& apparently 1993’s Son of the Pink Panther is just as putrid-at least the first five were quite enjoyable and I was happy to have finally gone through a series that should have been explored by me YEARS ago. I’d never gone through a franchise like this all in a row; hopefully everyone enjoyed (or at least not minded) although I’m now delighted to return to my typical wide variety starting w/ my next review. Judging by Letterboxd views, a large percentage of Pink Panther fans didn’t even bother with the rest of the franchise; might as well have those people hear about those movies from me, right?

Now, Curse turning out so badly was unfortunate and I don’t entirely blamed Ted Wass for that, as ill-suited as he was for the part. It could have been John Ritter playing the role (one of my Letterboxd mutuals will be crestfallen that this didn’t happen) and director Edwards wanted Rowan Atikinson-which is quite the idea as that was even before Blackadder, let alone Mr. Bean-but I don’t think either could have made this much better when the story was so tired and the gags either lame rehashes of better material or weird ideas that don’t really work, such as a long segment involving a blowup doll… don’t ask.

Curse continues the “plot” began in Trail. Clouseau is still missing so Dreyfus is asked to find another great detective to find him. He sabotages a talking computer (it’s the early 80’s, so people still thought that a talking sentient AI computer could be a thing) so it finds an incompetent NYC police sergeant played by Wass who just wasn’t as charming as Clouseau no matter how inept he acted. He tries to find both Clouseau and the Pink Panther diamond. What follows is buffoonery that usually isn’t terribly entertaining.

Not even the contributions of a name actor in a weird role, Leslie Ash sparking some excitement w/ her role that is sadly all too brief, and some decent action scenes made me enjoy this bomb of a film. They tried to give Clouseau a send-off (based on ideas from the proposed Romance of the Pink Panther film; as someone elsewhere informed me, that script is easily found online… and it is) but it has weird implications so your opinion of the character’s final fate is up for debate. Let’s see—there is also the opening credits where we see the Pink Panther cartoon character leave a 7-Eleven for absolutely no reason as this version of the classic theme uses what sounds like a Moog, given that there’s literally 20 seconds of random bleeps and bloops heard.

It was nice to see Niven (his final role; he died right before this was released), Capucine and Robert Wagner back together, even if it was a pale imitation of what they did in The Pink Panther 20 years beforehand-and Curse was a pale imitation of the series in the 60’s and 70’s. Alas, it would have been ideal if certain entities had not tried to Chase the Dragon and attempt to continue the idea way past its expiration point… no, I won’t check out Steve Martin’s version of Clouseau, either. I suppose there is the benefit of small miracles: if this hadn’t flopped so hard, we could have had up to FIVE more movies starring Wass as Sgt. Clifton Sleigh. No kidding, the studio wanted to continue the series w/ that new character. Thank goodness we aren’t in that part of the multiverse.