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Revenge of the Pink Panther Movie Review

Revenge of the Pink Panther is a 1978 comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and starring Peter Sellers. It’s the weakest one in the Peter Sellers pentalogy, but still a fun movie.

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“You knew him intimately.

I hated him intimately!“

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To prove that he still is strong and powerful, Philippe Douvier decides to kill Clouseau. Once news of his “death” has been announced, Clouseau tries to take advantage of it and goes undercover with Cato to find out who tried to kill him. First and foremost, once again the franchise attempted something new and fresh, which I really appreciated. Certainly, seeing everybody think that Clouseau is dead produced some very funny situations.

The whole hiding and being on the run angle was a lot of fun while Charles Dreyfus was again so amusing. He is happy that Clouseau has died, but he has to give him an eulogy and that particular sequence was brilliantly constructed and his facial expressions are hilarious. He gets to see the face of the idiot detective throughout and every single time I laughed out loud how memorable these bits and pieces were.

Clouseau is per usual fantastic and the film’s emphasis on dressing up in disguises was silly, but it fits this franchise, thus it was quite entertaining, especially that unexpected sequence with the transvestite. What I didn’t quite like was the expanded role of Cato, who is here straddled with an overly straightforward, too different role. I prefer him being crazy and fighting Clouseau in every of his scenes.

The major highlight of the film is the addition of Simone played so wonderfully by the charming and talented Dyan Cannon. This is by far the only truly well developed and strong female character in the entire franchise and all her scenes with the protagonist were uniformly terrific.

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Revenge of the Pink Panther is still to me the weakest of the five Sellers movies with a particularly annoying focus on too much action spectacle in the third act. The entire conclusion felt rushed and abrupt while the beginning was overly gangster-approached. But the dialogue is reliably strong and the humor is excellent. I just wish the overall plot was better.