Gag reel, Drama is Easy…Comedy is Dangerous, A Dream Team Like No Other, Master Thief-Global Crime Showdown!, Digital Copy, 27 Pink Panther cartoons

Harald Zwart directs The Pink Panther 2. The film stars Steve Martin (The Jerk), John Cleese (Rat Race), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2), Lily Tomlin (Orange County), Jeremy Irons (The House of the Spirits), and Jean Reno (Flyboys.) ***

Inspector Clouseau is back on the case. This time around, everyone’s favorite idiotic investigator joins forces with a group of inspectors who aren’t any more intelligent than he is. Their mission? Stop an evil mastermind who specialized in stealing artifacts. ***

I was opposed from day one to remaking/rebooting the Pink Panther franchise. The original films were great because it was the legendary Peter Sellers giving the Clouseau character life. It was Sellers’ character from day one, and in the films he starred, he didn’t fail to please. He was a comic talent in a league of his own. Steve Martin is a great comic actor, and several of the films Martin has starred in are amongst my favorites. However, Martin’s venture into family-friendly comedies has been a hit-and-miss venture. The renewed Pink Panther franchise is one of the misses. ***

The problem with The Pink Panther 2 is that, despite being a comedy, it simply isn’t funny. Crude humor and physical comedy are the only major attempted sources of laughter here, and it just doesn’t work. It’s low-level humor that kids viewing the film may find funny, but for us older folks who like to watch movies that have some substance to them, it just won’t hit the mark. ***

To put it in the simplest terms possible, there just isn’t a whole lot here to hold your interest. The plot is good enough and provides plenty of opportunities for laughs, but the director and company just take the easy way out, relying on an overabundance of stupid humor that never manages to accomplish anything. If you want to see the Pink Panther franchise done right, go see the old Sellers films. If you’re looking for a good modern comedy, there are many better options. ---

Image and Sound:

This isn’t an overwhelmingly great Blu-Ray transfer, but it certainly isn’t a bad one either. There are no major flaws in this transfer, but nothing is really going to jump out at you, either. Fine object detail is enough of an improvement over the DVD, but it’s not the massive improvement you may want. The audio track fares similarly – better than its DVD counterpart, but not by much.

Not much on here in the way of featurettes, just the standard behind-the-scenes stuff that is over almost as soon as it starts. There is a digital copy and a whole slew of Pink Panther cartoons in the set, but as a whole, these extras are just underwhelming. You’ll wish there was more supplemental material here.

Final Words: