Son of the Pink Panther Movie Review

As unmemorable as Ted Wass was in Curse of the Pink Panther, Roberto Benigni is positively awful as the lead in this even-iller-advised sequel. It's hard to believe that Benigni would be snagging an Oscar a mere four years later. Here he shows no trace of any depth or sincerity, or really any talent of any kind.

You can guess from the title what's up here: Clouseau is long gone, and Maria Gambrelli (from A Shot in the Dark) has moved on with her life. Add in a kidnapped princess and police commissioner Dreyfus (Herbert Lom, impossibly still alive) who stumble into Maria's world. Then throw in Clouseau's long-lost son, the idiotic Jacques Cambrelli, who is, yes, Maria's offspring.

The story actually gets more convoluted from there -- and never does it get any more amusing than someone falling down, falling out of a window, or falling off of a bed. Those expecting the Pink Panther series' mysterious hijinks are going to be sorely mistaken, replaced instead by a bumbling, balding Italian attempting to act half-French.

Everyone thought the $2.5 million box office disaster of Son of the Pink Panther was the death knell for the series, and no one could have predicted 2006's prequel of The Pink Panther, starring Steve Martin, to rear its ugly head. The good news: Early returns on Pink 2006 are so poor that it looks like it'll be another 13 years before anyone tries again.

Thank God.