We thought this was hilarious when it was run endlessly on HBO in the early 1980's, and we quoted it all the time: "Does your deug baht?" "Do you have a reum?". I was looking forward to seeing it again recently, but thought it fell rather flat when I finally did. It has its moments, and Herbert Lom is entertaining as "the lunatic Dreyfus", but it's not the gem I remember. (How's this for a line I bet they wish they could take back in a screwball comedy: on the topic of the disintegration of the UN, Dreyfus screams, "I want a crater! Wreckage! Twisted metal! Something the world will never forget!" In another couple decades the Twin Towers would fill that request for real.) The end picks up a little bit after a sagging middle (I thought that bedroom ambush between Clouseau and Cato would never end), so it's worth hanging on to get to the finale which has some clever stuff in it. Not as good as I remember it, though.
Review of The Pink Panther Strikes Again
