The Panther's in the Pink.(Now Playing: Film reviews, diamonds to dross)(Pink Panther)(Movie review)

The Pink Panther movies were never known for their sophistication. In fact, sophistication--particularly of the snobby, artifical European variety--was always one of their main satirical targets.

That tradition thankfully continues in Steve Martin's The Pink Panther, a gleefully unsophisticated farce that nicely captures the ramshackle irreverence of the previous installments. Any movie that lampoons the Smart car is not trying to impress the beautiful people. (The scene in which Martin's inept Inspector Clouseau has difficulty parallel parking his Smart car in a gargantuan open space is one of this new picture's many absurd laughs.)

The overwhelmingly negative reviews from most movie critics would have you believe that Martin's version is an affront to some cinema landmark. That's what happens when critics let their memories guide them rather than revisiting original films. From 1963's The Pink Panther all the way through to 1993's Son of the Pink Panther, filmmaker Blake Edwards' comedies were always something of an iffy proposition. Even at their sporadic best--1964's A Shot in the Dark--the movies worked mostly thanks to the inspired clumsiness of Peter Sellers as Clouseau.

Much of Clouseau's buffoonery grew directly out of his European surroundings. A Shot in the Dark takes aim at the aristocracy, specifically a prominent French family whose mansion has been soiled by the murder of one of their staff. While Clouseau falls for the main suspect--a lovely maid played by Elke Sommer--Edwards weaves a first-rate sex farce around him, hilariously lampooning the hypocrisy of this supposedly sophisticated household. (The movie's funniest moment might be its extended opening shot, in which the camera quietly watches from outside the mansion as the various masters and servants sneak in and out of each other's beds.)

The skepticism coursing through these films likely came from the filmmakers' outsider status. Sellers, of course, was British but hardly of noble extraction, while Edwards hailed from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Together, they made expatriate comedies--at once delighted by and ...