There’s one good laugh in The Pink Panther 2 and it’s nothing but a throwaway line. The bungling Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin)
lists all that he misses about his estranged lover, Nicole (Emily Mortimer),
and happens to mention that one of her many cats is named Caligula. That’s it, right there, the biggest laugh I got during the 92 minutes I spent
watching this film that I will never get back. I’ve just saved you eight bucks.
It’s not that this sequel is bad, it’s simply unnecessary. There are no new revelations about Clouseau’s character, the plot remains the same, as the priceless Pink Panther diamond is
once more in jeopardy and Martin, director Harald Zwart and two other
screenwriters haven’t found any new ways to make its main character fall any funnier. It’s all been done before, much better by Peter Sellers and director Blake Edwards
in the original Panther films, and while it’s fun to see an international cast featuring Andy Garcia, John Cleese, Alfred
Molina, Jean Reno, Jeremy Irons and Aishwarya Rai, the most beautiful woman in
the world, try to out-mug each other, it isn’t worth the price of admission.
Mayhem ensues as Clouseau and a world renowned dream team of detectives try to
recover precious artifacts from the cat burglar known as “The Tornado.” Restaurants are burned to the ground, the Pope is humiliated in Vatican Square
and predictable “twists” occur like clockwork. All the while, this cast laughs its way to the bank
collecting big paychecks for this folly while those in the audience are the
ones left holding the bag. Talk about predictable.
There are plenty of good ideas in Paul McGuigan’s science fiction thriller Push. For the first 45 minutes, the director looks as though he might be on track to
deliver a genre classic. Unfortunately, the movie’s serpentine plot winds up twisting itself into knots, so much so that by the
end, what had seemed fresh comes off as tired and labored.
Seems as though years back, Nazi scientists, who were a pretty busy bunch if
films of this sort are any indication, were experimenting with prisoners who
they discovered had psychic gifts. They hoped to tweak and heighten their
abilities and use what they learned to create super soldiers. Though the war
ended before they could carry out their plan, other governments around the
world picked up their research and wound up creating people known as Sniffs,
who can track anyone from the slightest scent, Stitches, who possess powerful
healing powers, Watchers, who can tell the future, Movers, who can manipulate
objects and Pushers, who manipulate your mind.
The setup is a good one as screenwriter David Bourla has created a potentially
rich cast of characters. However, the plot here is thin as it revolves around a
Watcher named Cassie (Dakota Fanning) who recruits a Mover named Nick (Chris
Evans) to help her track down a case containing a powerful drug that’s been stolen by Kira (Camilla Belle), a Pusher who’s escaped from The Division, where these mutants are experimented on. This is
the sort of movie that would be fine at a 90-minute running time, but McGuigan
is intent on wowing us with two big climaxes where one would suffice.
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2009.
