{"id":3904,"date":"2024-09-07T04:02:57","date_gmt":"2024-09-07T04:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3904"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:47:51","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:47:51","slug":"son-of-the-pink-panther","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/07\/son-of-the-pink-panther\/","title":{"rendered":"Son of the Pink Panther"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Son of the Pink Panther <\/strong>(1993)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MGM\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, comic violence, mild sensuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Blake Edwards\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Blake Edwards, Madeline Sunshine and Steve Sunshine\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Henry Mancini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Dick Bush\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 27, 1993 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Roberto Benigni, Herbert Lom, Burt Kwouk, Robert Davi, Claudia Cardinale, Debrah Farentino, Shabana Azmi, Jennifer Edwards, Dermot Crowley, Oliver Cotton, Graham Stark, Liz Smith, Anton Rogers, Aharon Ipale, Mike Starr, Nicoletta Braschi.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $2.4M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0I really don\u2019t understand the appeal of Roberto Benigni, the Italian comic actor who took home a pair of Academy Awards for the 1998 WWII dramedy Life is Beautiful. I didn\u2019t laugh when he climbed over the seats at that year\u2019s Oscar ceremony after his name was announced for Best Actor. Aside from Life is Beautiful, which I thought was good not great, I haven\u2019t liked any of his movies (e.g. Johnny Stecchino, The Monster and To Rome with Love).<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t even bother seeing Pinocchio (2002). As such, it would unfair to call Son of the Pink Panther<\/strong> his worst movie. It is, however, the worst of the ones I\u2019ve seen. It\u2019s also the second-worst of the Pink Panther series after 1982\u2019s unwatchable Trail of the Pink Panther. The idea is that Benigni\u2019s character is the illegitimate son of Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Apparently, Clouseau made whoopee with Maria Gambrelli, a character played by Elke Sommer in A Shot in the Dark (1964), and fathered a son. This time around, she\u2019s played by Claudia Cardinale who played the Princess in the first movie back in \u201963. I\u2019ll concede it\u2019s not a bad premise. However, the rest of Son of the Pink Panther<\/strong> is truly bad. Like its star, it\u2019s not funny.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A group of terrorists led by Hans (Davi, Die Hard) kidnaps Princess Yasmin of Lugash (Farentino, Earth 2) demanding two things: (1) a $100 million ransom and (2) that the king abdicates his throne. Since the crime occurred in French territorial waters, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Surete<\/em>. On his way to meet with the chief of police, Commissioner Dreyfus (Lom) is in a car accident with the kidnappers. A bumbling local gendarme<\/em> arrives on the scene on a motorized bicycle. That would be Jacques Gambrelli (Benigni), a clumsy idiot with traits Dreyfus finds familiar. It takes only seconds for his eye to start twitching uncontrollably. Guess who the police chief assigns to help Dreyfus solve the case? In less than 24 hours, he\u2019s in the hospital with injuries sustained from a bombing at Gambrelli\u2019s mother\u2019s house. This happens just moments after Maria confirms Dreyfus\u2019 suspicions that the young cop is the son of Clouseau. Gambrelli proceeds on his own to locate and rescue the princess. As expected, he lives up to his family name, making progress only by sheer dumb luck.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s sad to think Son of the Pink Panther<\/strong> is Blake Edwards\u2019 final film before he retired. It\u2019s a sour note on which to go out. Not only is it incredibly unfunny, it\u2019s also convoluted. The ones behind the kidnapping are Yasmin\u2019s stepmother (Indian actress Azmi) and her lover, a military general (Ipale, The Mummy). That much is clear. Their endgame is another story. It has something to do with an unfriendly neighboring country, but beyond that I have no idea. Benigni is just plain annoying, but I take a small measure of comfort in knowing that he wasn\u2019t Edwards\u2019 first choice for the role. He should have gone with Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr. Bean). Not that it would have helped much because in addition to the terrible script, the comic bits fall harder than an elephant on a slippery wooden floor. It\u2019s painful to watch the actors take part in such poorly choreographed slapstick. Besides, we\u2019ve seen many of these scenes before in earlier Pink Panther films. For example, Son of the Pink Panther<\/strong> contains yet another scene of somebody being knocked out a window by a door while talking on the phone and literally hanging on by a wire. It was amusing the first time; now it\u2019s just old and stale.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The only saving grace (as usual) is the animated\/live-action opening titles in which composer Henry Mancini hands over the baton to the animated Pink Panther so he can conduct Bobby McFerrin in a brand new take on the familiar theme song. I like the original version better. Honestly, Edwards should have retired the series after Peter Sellers died. Son of the Pink Panther<\/strong> is proof positive that it\u2019s best to leave sleeping dogs- or should I say panthers?- lie. It fails on virtually every level and deserves to be disowned.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Son of the Pink Panther (1993)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MGM\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, comic violence, mild sensuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Blake Edwards\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Blake Edwards, Madeline Sunshine and Steve Sunshine\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Henry Mancini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Dick Bush\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 27, 1993 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Roberto Benigni, Herbert Lom, Burt Kwouk, Robert Davi, Claudia Cardinale, Debrah Farentino, Shabana Azmi, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sequels-remakes","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Son-of-the-Pink-Panther-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3904"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5260,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904\/revisions\/5260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}