But Peter Sellers returns as Inspector Closeau, an incompetent French detective who heads the French police. The straight-faced Closeau blunders his way through cases, yet somehow succeeds in the end.
His former superior, Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), has gone mad through his impatience with Clouseau. He is institutionalized, but escapes and forms a criminal gang. His plan is to use a secret weapon developed by Fassbender (Richard Vernon) to blackmail the world into assasinating Closeau. But the existence of the latter is so charmed that the assassins instead all kill each other.
How others will see it. Of all the Pink Panther movies, The Pink Panther Strikes Again is considered second best behind A Shot in the Dark (1976). But both are similar in quality, as is the original The Pink Panther (1963) and the franchise reboot The Return of the Pink Panther (1975).
One more entry, Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), kept up the laughs. Peter Sellers died in 1980, but at least six additional Pink Panther movies were made, all best forgotten.
As Inspector Closeau, Peter Sellers received three Golden Globe nominations for Best Comedy Actor. They were for the films The Pink Panther, The Return of the Pink Panther, and The Pink Panther Strikes Again.
Additionally, The Pink Panther Strikes Again received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Comedy, as did The Return of the Pink Panther the year before.
The user reviews agree that numerous scenes are hilarious, but as with most comedies, some gags work better than others.
How I felt about it. Blake Edwards directed eight films in the Pink Panther franchise, including all the ones worth watching, but ending with three films worth avoiding. Fortunately for us, The Pink Panther Strikes Again falls in the former category.
This is because it features the two most entertaining actors of the franchise, Peter Sellers in the lead role and Herbert Lom as his exasperated one-time superior. Sellers always gets the best of Lom in the movies, but in real life, Sellers died at the age of 54, while Lom lived to see his 95th birthday.
It is generally acknowledged that Sellers was so ideally cast as Inspector Clouseau that nobody else is able to effectively play the role. Alan Arkin received Best Actor Oscar nominations in both 1967 and 1969, but in between, his 1968 attempt at the Clouseau character was a dud.
Steve Martin's 2006 turn at least led to a 2009 sequel, but although his slapstick entertained kids, adult viewers were less receptive, given the dire imdb.com user ratings.
Clouseau has his moments of clairvoyant detective skill, such as realizing Dreyfus's lair is in a particular distant castle. But, mostly, he is an idiot. His best comic sequence is at the Fassbender home, where he interrogates the servants and destroys the furniture, in that order.
The Pink Panther Strikes Again is far from perfect. We are dubious of the scenes where he fights Clouseau's servant Cato (Burt Kwouk), a running gag throughout the 1970s films whose occasional amusing moments don't make up for their overall embarrassment.
The "that's not my dog" joke is far from original to the film. The same goes for the criminal escaping from police captors with a trip to the loo. And no matter how good Omar Sharif was in bed, it is difficult to believe that Lesley-Anne Down doesn't realize that Peter Sellers is a different person.
Nonetheless, The Pink Panther Strikes Again is an unusually good movie. The cartoon credits are great, Herbert Lom is a hoot, Byron Kane has a fine turn as Henry Kissinger, and it is fun to see Clouseau as the anti-James Bond, invincible not because of his skill but because of his ineptitude.