by MARK SLUTSKY

Steve Martin is a well-respected actor, comedian, director, playwright and even novelist. He’s even a noted art collector. Dude’s got nothing to prove... or at least you’d think. So you’ve got to wonder why exactly he’d take on a remake of The Pink Panther—why any comedian would ever attempt to fill Peter Sellers’ shoes.

Now, I’m not personally of the opinion that Sellers was the greatest comic actor of all time or anything (one viewing of 1965’s What’s New, Pussycat? was enough to disabuse me of that), but when he was good he could be pretty damn brilliant, and more importantly, The Pink Panther’s Inspector Clouseau was his own creation, indelibly tied to him. Martin can try all he wants, but the comparisons are inevitable, and inevitably unflattering—he might as well take on Chaplin’s Little Tramp.

The Pink Panther ’06 has a pretty decent cast, I’ll give it that—in addition to Martin there’s Kevin Kline as Clouseau’s superior, Chief Inspector Dreyfus, Beyoncé Knowles as pop star “Xania,” Jean Reno as the real French person/sidekick and Emily Mortimer as the tacit love interest. The plot revolves around the theft of an oversized pink diamond, but the story is really just a skeletal thing on which to hang fart and Viagra jokes and countless laboured pratfalls.

The usually reliable Kline is pretty much wasted, and Reno looks more hangdog than ever, although Beyoncé (who’s not even onscreen for very long, although she’s a total bombshell as usual whenever she is) and Mortimer bring a little charm to the proceedings. And Martin? He... he’s trying, you can tell. He is definitely trying to make this thing funny. But it just doesn’t work—the physical comedy seems so forced, the gags come out of nowhere and aren’t particularly original or well-executed. Despite the pedigree, the big names, the big franchise and the big marketing push, this is really just another throwaway Steve Martin comedy remake—think Sgt. Bilko or The Out-of-Towners. There’s no denying the man has gifts (he’s been funny as recently as 1999’s Bowfinger) but remaking old comedies isn’t one of them.

The Pink Panther opens Friday, Feb. 10

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