Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)

This film would have made a triumphant documentary or T.V. Movie tribute to one of the screens geniuses, Peter Sellers. As a 100 minute comedy movie it doesn't quite work. The best scenes are the ones that feature Inspector Clouseau, other than this, and there isn't even alot of them, the film as lukewarm, being neither funny nor entertaining. However if you put to the back of your mind that this was a patchwork film made from material filmed before Sellers, and indeed Inspector Clouseau, sorry Chief Inspector Clouseau died, you may enjoy it. Edwards tries his best but the whole thing seems forced. Granted some scenes are funny and Henry Mancini's score does work, but for more fun watch another Panther movie.

Fmovies: You've probably read my "Pink Panther" reboot review, but I love the Pink Panther movies and cartoons. I grew up with them. And when I heard about "Trail of the Pink Panther" getting terrible reviews, I was like, "OK, I'm surprised, but I haven't seen the movie yet." I actually thought that to myself one day before I watched it.

During the title sequence (although it was funny), I just quietly read this title: "To Peter. The One and Only Inspector Clouseau". When I saw it, I was like, "Wait a second, Peter Sellers have died?! What's going on in it?!" Then I then noticed something, a montage of Sellers as Clouseau. People were like, "Are you serious?!", but for me, I basically just let my laughs all out. I don't care what everyone says, but I enjoyed "Trail of the Pink Panther" a lot. It was basically a tribute to Sellers, which Blake Edwards did a good job with.

So, overall, this is basically the king of guilty pleasures. Watch the movie. It's hysterical and is definitely a great tribute to Sellers. So I am giving it a 10 out of 10.

I still can't figure out why they made a Pink Panther movie after Peter Sellers died. This one features someone stealing the diamond and Insp. Clouseau getting sent to find it, only to disappear in the process. So, most of the movie features interviews with other cast members about how they met Clouseau (and featuring many of Clouseau's mishaps). At the beginning they say "To Peter, the one and only Inspector Clouseau", but I would agree with Peter Sellers's widow that "Trail of the Pink Panther" dishonored his memory. Maybe it is good for a few laughs - namely the airplane scene - but it otherwise just seems unnecessary. And then there was another Pink Panther movie after this.

Trail of the Pink Panther fmovies. I've been watching Pink Panther films since I was very young. Peter Sellers is probably one of the early names I got to fix with a face on the screen, he and Roger Moore. I really like Sellers and this series is one of my favorites. However this isn't really a new film. It's Blake Edwards' tribute to Peter Sellers. It could have worked out great if it was a television program because it's a mere collection from old Panther films shown as the characters who knew Clouseau from the old films narrate about their relationships with him. It was fun to watch though. But makes you sad as it makes you nostalgic to Sellers and the old films and the "baameb".

Cut 45 minutes of filler material and this would make a nice little hour-long network retrospective and a decent tribute to Peter Sellers. It mostly plays that way anyway, with a "plot" which is simply dropped halfway through, serving only as one of the framing devices to introduce the Sellers clips. The other framing device, a reporter's series of interviews with Clouseau's associates, is so inanely written and obviously "tribute-y" that it's shocking to remember that this was a theatrical feature film.

And that was Blake Edwards' major mistake. Some of the unused footage is amusing, but if it had been up to Sellers' usual hilarious standard, it wouldn't have gone unused. And the flashback sequences are made up of, well, flashbacks--scenes which we already saw in the previous movies. On a TV special, that would have been fine. Here, it just makes you wonder what Edwards could have been thinking.

Blake Edwards was not interested in doing a "tribute" to the late Peter Sellers with this movie. What he wanted to do was find a way to milk more money out of the property by first setting us up with a "Clouseau disappears" movie to squeeze the last nickel out of Sellers posthumously and then hope audiences would come back for the dreadful follow-up with Ted Wass and he could then get some more movies out of it. For the first half, we have half a plot by using old Sellers outtakes and then when he runs out it turns into a "tribute" by spotlighting old clips. What I remember so vividly when I saw this movie in the theaters was how after the outtakes ended, absolutely no one in the theater laughed for the last half of the movie.

If Edwards wanted to do a proper "tribute" he would have taken these Sellers outtakes (which are funny) and put them back into longer directors cut versions of the Panther films they were originally intended for (one outtake finally clears up why Clouseau keeps referring to Colin Blakely as "Sergeant Yard" in "Pink Panther Strikes Again"). The end result would have pleased everyone as a proper tribute to Sellers' genius and when Edwards used to know how to make a funny movie. Unfortunately Edwards wasn't bright enough to think of a sensible idea like that.