RevengeOfThePinkPanther

Revenge Of The Pink Panther

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The fifth and final film to star Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, Revenge of the Pink Panther shows that at this point, the franchise was stumbling, lacking the clever spark that animated the earlier films. Here, a ring of drug dealers decides to get rid of Clouseau so they can proceed with their evil plans unopposed, but while an assassination attempt leaves the rest of the world convinced that Clouseau is dead, in reality he survived and must try to set things right in disguise.
One key problem with Revenge of the Pink Panther is that the story is, in a nutshell, dull. Far too much screen time is wasted on dull scenes involving a whole host of secondary characters, none of whom are interesting in their own right at all. In a bold display of disregard for continuity, Chief Inspector Dreyfus re-appears here and has a fairly significant role, but like the villains, he's given more attention than is merited. While Dreyfus offered an amusing counterpoint to Clouseau in A Shot in the Dark, here his one-note comic element, his hatred of Clouseau, soon wears thin.

What about Sellers? He makes a valiant effort to make Clouseau's scenes funny, but I think he's hampered by a script that just doesn't hit the right notes. The main joke of Revenge of the Pink Panther appears to be "Clouseau in disguise," perhaps using the theory that if one disguise (the hunchback) was funny in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, then lots of disguises will be even funnier. As we might expect, this doesn't really work out, and Revenge of the Pink Panther ends up falling flat, with no particularly effective humor.