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Favorite Pink Panther Film


What's your favorite Pink Pnther film out of:

1. The Pink Panther
2. A Shot In The Dark
3. The Return Of The Pink Panther
4. The Pink Panther Strikes Again
5. Revenge Of The Pink Panther
6. Trail Of The Pink Panther
7. Curse Of The Pink Panther
8. Son Of The Pink Panther

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"A Shot in the Dark", then "The Pink Panther". These two were made in the '60s. The next movie was made ten years later, followed by another trail of movies. Of the later ones I watched (Return, Revenge, and Trail)none of them were any good. Seller's acting was too outrageous and had none of the earnest bumbling of these two originals. The story lines in the later ones were also dumbed down, and the acting wasn't as good. Neither was the direction.

I don't want to be a clockwork orange!

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My Favorite in the Pink Panther series are

1. The Return of the Pink Panther
2. The Pink Panther Strikes Again
3. The Revenge of the Pink Panther
4. The Pink Panther
5. A Shot in the Dark

All the others I don't like.

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My selection :

1. The Return of the Pink Panther (I prefer Plummer than Niven, low budget movie with gags that work so well, I specially like the scenes in Gstaad : "staubsucker", "wie geht's ?" in lady litton's room...)
2. A Shot in the Dark (all the components are here with Dreyfus getting more and more crazy, so funny, I like the ending)
3. The Pink Panther Strikes Again (the craziest with many references to movies)
4. The Revenge of the Pink Panther (the cartoonest)
5. The Pink Panther (more classic)

...the others and specially those made after Sellers'death aren't worth, they don't exist according to me, I don't really want to see them.

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My list...

1. A Shot in the Dark - One of the funniest movies ever made! A true classic!

2. The Pink Panther - This movie didn't rate very highly with me when I was younger, but as I've gotten older it's become my second favorite. It is quite a bit different from the later movies as it's a comedy\mystery, not an over-the-top comedy (at least not until the costumed car-chase at the end).

3. The Pink Panther Strikes Again - I remember seeing this in the theater as a kid and laughing myself silly. When I watch it now, it's still good, but I find the first third of the movie a bit slow.

4. Return of the Pink Panther - A nice relaunch of the series.

5. Revenge of the Pink Panther - The series is running out of steam with this one. Some funny moments, but mostly a disappointment.

I don't care for the other movies.

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1) Strikes Again was definitely the best and funniest from start to finish.

2) Return was almost as good.

3) Shot in the Dark was pretty good. Had some funny moments but Sellers hadn't found the character yet and the Kato scenes weren't that good yet.

4) Revenge tried really hard to be good but just didn't do anything for me.

5) The Pink Panther was just not funny, to the point of being bad and the pacing was poor and the fact that Clouseau's wife is having an affair with the jewel thief is just stupid.

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for me, top honors goes to either A Shot in the Dark or Return of the Pink Panther - both are Sellers at his best, IMO - but i also still love the Steve Martin film... it gets a lot of flak, but it's still hilarious to me! 8)

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The Return of the Pink Panther is my favourite because of its stylish film making, continuity and best performed overall.

The first Pink Panther second and I would argue is the best in the series, even though not my fav. It barely relies on slapstick to be funny, more on story and dialog for its humour. Not overplayed either.

A shot in the Dark third. It has its funny moments but I think there's something that feels a little less stylish than the two above. I didn't like the concluding ending either.

Revenge fourth. It never made me laugh out loud but it was more subtle than the worst I've seen, Strikes again, which was quite simply the most tacky, rushed, forced, gimmicky and outragiously silly film ever.

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I think that the first and original pink panther is head and shoulders above all the others. What makes this film work for me is that all the cast members are talented and share screen time, and Sellers isn't the one man show that he becomes in the sequels. Truthfully this is my favorite rendition of Closeau as well. It's completely believable even though he's still slapstick and french. In the sequels he's lost all sense of realism and I can't even watch. I also happen to think David Niven is great in this, and the Phantom would have made a great series of movies, provided Closeau was always hot on the trail, but forever foiled by his own shortcomings.

I'm sure most would dissagree, but I feel like this movie is completely different from all the others, except Shot in the Dark, and that's what makes it so much better for me. If the sequels had stayed truer to this film I would have been much happier.

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I have only seen Shot in the Dark, Pink Panther Strikes Again and Revenge of the Pink Panther. I have seen only the beginning of the first one. I think Strikes Again is the better of the 3.

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Just rewatched the Sellers entries in the series, and the OP's list - although just a chronological rundown - is exactly what I make of the quality.

For me, Clouseau belongs firmly in the early-mid 60s - and Edwards (not Sellers) completely fails to bring the character and franchise into the 70s - a troublesome decade for Edwards in general, who wouldn't recover creatively until attacking more personal projects with 10 and S.O.B, which saw him reclaim some bite, and then flourish with Victor/Victoria, a sharpened return to the farcial style he employed in the 60s with The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark.

Upon resurrecting the franchise in 1975 (a desperate bid on Edwards' part after a string of critical and commercial failures) his Panther output was uninspired, slipshod, repetitive and lazy (and I like Blake Edwards! - I'll also give it to him that the opening heist of Return is beautifully done) making for a steadily declining series of films.

In my opinion, Closeau works better as part of an ensemble, interacting with people rather than props (a prop can't set you up a straight line, not in Edwards' skill set at least) and what must have been ever-increasing pressure to up the chaos ante with each new installment fundamentally undermines Return, Strikes Again and Revenge. Many of the gags are poorly conceived, staged, filmed and edited. Sellers (and I'm not a devout Sellers fanboy!) salvages what he can, but one gets the feeling all parties were more and more checked out with each subsequent film.

As Closeau tearasses through the franchise, the humor is less anarchic than it is uncontrollably asinine and the films are only saved on a scene-by-scene basis by the charms of Sellers and Herbert Lom, both sadly caricaturized in ever broadening strokes by the time they got to Strikes Again - the two performers easily elevated above the non-characters surrounding them. The charms of the first two installments dwindle as the focus is pulled from bedroom farce to melee - a theoretically sound escalation botched by Edwards' attempts to recreate the same gags, and basically the same films (and the same successes) over and over again with a more is more approach. By the time he performed a bit of cinematic necromancy with Trail it became pretty clear his interests in the material were purely commercial, and those post-Sellers films are roundly - and appropriately - dismissed as such. Sellers' absence leaves a glaring hole, because the quality of writing and directing between Return/Strikes/Revenge is about the same as Curse.

For me, it's only The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark - both solid, airy, entertaining efforts made more illustrious by the idealized lounge and martinis and affluence 60s milieu, Sellers' restraint (I far prefer him stretching the seams instead of bursting out of them with wild abandon) and Edwards' technical bravado - and the rest, a short burst of mess, hold little interest. That's just me ...

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This one is the only one I love so far. I've seen a few of the sequels. Just awful. Too much extreme physical humor and pratfalls. I'll stick to this movie.

~~
Jim Hutton: talented gorgeous hot hunk; adorable as ElleryQueen; SEXIEST ACTOR EVER

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