just watch it!

Great Film overall

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Two years after the death of Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards returned to direct a further instalment in the 'Pink Panther' series. The controversy was that Sellers was again the top-billed actor despite being dead! To this end, Trail of the Pink Panther is a movie made up of out-takes and best-of clips, patched together with new material featuring some of the characters from some of the old films. The end result is a very strange film indeed. One which can barely be described as a proper movie at all. For the first half the film is about the new theft of the Pink Panther jewel and Clouseau's involvement in the case but half-way through he vanishes when the airplane he is travelling on disappears. The jewel theft is never solved or even referred back to and Clouseau is never found! In other words, it is a story that makes no sense, which is hardly surprising given the fact it was made by shoehorning unused clips of Sellers from The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and The Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) into a new story and trying to make them flow into a cohesive narrative. Needless to say, the result is an incoherent mess. The first half of the movie is primarily made up of these unused clips, while the second resorts to just using best-of sequences from all of the previous movies. This latter half also has a narrative where Joanna Lumley plays a TV investigator who interviews many familiar faces to try and ascertain if Clouseau is really gone. Yeah, as I say.... it's really very odd.The film became kind of infamous on account of Sellers widowed wife bringing a successful lawsuit against it for tarnishing her late husband's memory. Its not really surprising to be fair as this truly is a shameless milking exercise. There are even some appalling voice impersonations for Sellers and a very frail looking David Niven, which merely adds further to the infamy. But the odd thing is, that despite all these obvious handicaps, this remains a somewhat compulsively watchable bit of strangeness. The 'new' Sellers material is not exactly stellar stuff and you can sort of see why they were never used, yet they are equally not terrible either - certainly good to see if you are a fan. They are admittedly the sort of thing that nowadays would be on the extra segments of a DVD but, well, this came out way before the DVD age, it has to be given that at least. The new material is mixed, with Lom still good value for sure but its mainly the Sellers stuff that this is worth watching for. All-in-all, Trail of the Pink Panther is a bit of a hack job in truth but it's sheers bizarreness made it an interesting watch for me.

I genuinely wanted to like this film. I love the Pink Panther movies, and the animated TV series, but this was really quite shameless. Not to imagine quite strange, not only in its idea which is a rather bad one admittedly but in its execution.It is supposedly a tribute to the late Peter Sellers. I admit it his presence in this film as Inspector Clousseau actually saves this movie from being any worse than it was, but he deserved much better than this. Herbert Lom is sort of fun too, and Henry Mancini's original music is marvellous. However that is the only praise I can give.Blake Edwards is talented but I found it difficult to believe he directed this, it didn't feel like his style of directing. The film looks rather dated too, while the plot is a shambles and the sight gags and script are really quite poor even for a Pink Panther film. In regard to the latter reason, the outtakes are unremarkable at best and the new footage is dismally unfunny. Also, the pace is pedestrian, despite people saying that the 1963 Pink Panther movie is the dullest entry, and I have heard people say that, I think this entry is the dullest. Other than Sellers and Lom, the other acting is rather poor. Joanna Lumley grates, Robert Loggia is wasted and David Niven's voice is dubbed terribly. I understand Niven was ill, but really they either should've used his real voice or not used him at all.All in all, a shameless mess. 3/10 Bethany Cox

OK this is the 2nd appearance of The Pink Panther even though there were several other titles with that name it has nothing to do with it it was only in for a cameo where someone steals it and Cluesau is kidnapped (after the abomination of the first one I'm celebrating) and some journalist asks questions about Cluesau (Cluesau isn't in this one only in Archive Footage I know a complete ripoff even though so was the rest of the series) and they ask even Charles the real "Phantom" makes an appearance we see Clueseau's childhood and all this other crap which has nothing to do with anything if the journalist was really an author writing bio's about detectives who are so stupid it isn't funny (the only other thing in that category is FAMILY GUY) OK Clueseau isn't found. Oh we are all depressed *sarcasm*. seriously if I were to recommend any of the Pink Panther series which I am still trying to put my finger on why the #### anyone calls the series COMEDY (don't worry I get that a lot like with movies like Charlies Angels 2, Pirate Movie, Muriels Wedding (I am still ashamed I even watched it) (don't watch Full Throttle even if somebody pays you $100) well this movie is horrible not for anyone with intelligence (maybe from Cluesau to Clueless)

It could've been better movie and smarter greeting in the memory of (Peter Sellers). It wasn't that difficult to write a script which can make all the characters unites to find the real criminal especially with the existence of (Herbert Lom) as (Dreyfus), (Burt Kwouk) as (Cato), and (David Niven) himself, instead of this boring idiot TV report which deceived the audience by another (Peter Sellers)'s movie to discover eventually that it's just a miser scenes of him (deleted of previous movies of the series) then a program about him with some already used scenes from the series' previous movies !Maybe the shock of (Sellers)'s sudden death was stronger than everybody so they couldn't do anything. Maybe they were too loyal to seize the opportunity and occupy the movie of the great late icon after his absence. Or maybe (Blake Edwards) had something else in his mind.. in fact he wanted to push the franchise with another lead and I mean (Ted Wass) who'll appear at the next year in (Curse of the Pink Panther - 1983), so he made (Trail of the Pink Panther) as just the first volume however it was very odd and silly enough (the movie, the idea of another Clouseau, moreover THAT Clouseau !!). There isn't any bright thing in here : The pace is deadly, the performance is average which means bad in a Pink Panther's movie !, the personality of the father was pathetic; just a fabricated pretext to capture the lost presence of (Sellers), maybe the music of (Henry Macini) was the smartest element; you can sense its strong sad feeling while the elevator's simple scene which became like a small elegy honors and misses a star's uniqueness.So it could be a 20 minutes movie for the original Pink Panther as his last brief sketches, or a half movie; a forever deficient one which was too lame and proudly doesn't try to compensate its weakness with anything close to cohesive (Not to mention comic !), or it's nothing but a phantom of a dead star, lovely personality, or nice movie. In one word it's how to define demise or fizzle cinematically !