Line #16 YMMV/ThePinkPanther


1	%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.
2	Entries in this series with their own YMMV pages:
3	* ''YMMV/ThePinkPanther1963''
4	* ''YMMV/AShotInTheDark''
5	* ''YMMV/TheReturnOfThePinkPanther''
6	* ''YMMV/ThePinkPantherStrikesAgain''
7	* ''YMMV/RevengeOfThePinkPanther''
8	* ''YMMV/TrailOfThePinkPanther''
9	* ''YMMV/CurseOfThePinkPanther''
10	* ''YMMV/SonOfThePinkPanther''
11	* ''YMMV/ThePinkPanther2006''
12	* ''YMMV/ThePinkPanther2''
13	----
14	[[foldercontrol]]
15
16	[[folder:The films]]
17	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
18	** Music/HenryMancini's iconic, smooth and jazzy "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEt_FkMkaO4 Pink Panther Theme]]", of course. Each film would have a different version of it, but the original is the most remembered. Special mention however, goes to the funky [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FMpmp7ERHw rearrangement]] in ''Revenge of the Pink Panther'', as well as the upbeat and catchy [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQDjAx0n3I acapella rearrangement]] by Bobby Mcfarin in ''Son of the Pink Panther''.
19	** There's his "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5enOsT3kdVc A Shot in the Dark]]" theme, which was also used for ''The Inspector'' animated shorts.
20	%%* CrossesTheLineTwice: Most of ''A Shot in the Dark'' and ''The Pink Panther Strikes Again'', even for a BlackComedy.
21	* EnsembleDarkhorse:
22	** And how; the 1963 version of ''The Pink Panther'' was meant to be the first in a series of films about the Phantom, the master thief played by Creator/DavidNiven who stole the eponymous diamond, but it ended up being all about [[BreakoutCharacter Clouseau]], because he ended up becoming the most popular character from that film.
23	** The animated Pink Panther character, too; he even got a couple of animated series.
24	** Dreyfus may count too. Besides Sellers' epic portrayal of Clouseau, his insanity caused by Clouseau is one of the other reasons people watch the films. Because of this, Dreyfus would even be carried over into the reboot.
25	** And don't forget Cato. He has a fanbase too. (There were plans to work him into the reboot, but they couldn't get Creator/JackieChan for the role.)
26	** Marie Jouvet, who carries the Clouseau-less parts of ''Trail'' after his disappearance. Instead of just being a Clouseau expy, she's depicted as a [[StraightMan Straight Woman]] getting a glimpse into the inspector's mad world, and is helped by Creator/JoannaLumley's strong performance. Some fans feel that ''Curse'' would have turned out a lot better if it had kept with her as the main character, instead of bringing in Clifton Sleigh.
27	* FanonDiscontinuity: For some -- if not most -- fans, only the five films Sellers actually did count. As for ''Trail of...'' the scenes of Sellers it used ''can'' be counted as the deleted material from ''Strikes Again'' that they actually were; the rest of the film can be taken or left. Even some VHS and DVD packages of the films only include the Sellers entries to which MGM/UA has the rights (see MissingEpisode in the Trivia tab). Many die-hard fans consider the post-Sellers films and the reboot movies to not count, and generally avoid them at all costs.
28	* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: The time that Clouseau... oh, you know what? This deserves a [[Funny/ThePinkPanther page of its own.]]
29	* GrowingTheBeard: ''A Shot in the Dark'' is the first film that's actually about Clouseau, the first that introduces Dreyfus and Cato, and was the best reviewed film in the series.
30	* HarsherInHindsight: The title sequence to ''Curse'' depicts Clifton Sleigh as an Invisible Man. Not only was Sleigh's lack of presence compared to Clouseau one of the biggest criticisms of the film, but actor Ted Wass rapidly sank away into obscurity afterwards, and nowadays is better known as a director than for anything from his acting career. On the bright side, Ted Wass claimed he never wanted to be an actor in the first place, as directing was always his main interest; in fact, when he was cast in the series ''Blossom'', one of the stipulations in his contract was that he'd be allowed to direct some episodes so he could jump start that career.
31	* IAmNotShazam: The Pink Panther is not Clouseau or, as MGM once stated, Sir Charles Litton, but the diamond that was stolen. For younger fans grown up more familiar with the cartoon spin-offs, they would be more inclined to wonder why the ''Pink Panther'' film series isn't called ''The Inspector'' film series.
32	%%* JerkassWoobie: Dreyfus until he [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope jumped off the slippery slope]].
33	* JustHereForGodzilla:
34	** Many critics have argued, ''especially'' in the wake of the reboot, that as popular as they were these were never great films, or even good ones. They were loved for Creator/PeterSellers' performances and the animated title sequences, which was why continuing the series after his death didn't work. Interestingly, the {{Biopic}} ''The Life and Death of Peter Sellers'' has an invented scene where Sellers uses the premiere of one of the films to insult Creator/BlakeEdwards, calling him a hack, and then claiming that people only come to see him perform. The scene is intended to paint Sellers in a bad light, but when you consider this trope, he could be seen as speaking a blunt truth! In the series' fanbase, there are those who put up with the non-Sellers films for more of Dreyfus and/or Cato's hijinks.
35	*** The original 1963 film illustrates this very well, ironically. People who watch the original film, [[EnsembleDarkhorse expecting it to be about Clouseau]], are typically disappointed that it is a '60s caper with a VillainProtagonist trying to seduce a princess and everyone else spending most of the running time discussing sex. Clouseau shows up for maybe a third of the film, and the scenes without him ''drag''. It does contain a car chase scene that would be at home in the other movies.
36	** Many who disliked the 2006 remake have said that the only good thing about it is the animated title sequence. Same goes for the attempted 1993 series revival, Son of the Pink Panther.
37	* MagnificentBastard: In ''Inspector Clouseau,'' [[PhantomThief Clyde Hargreaves]] uses his position as the son of a prison warden to form a gang of master criminals who know him by the codename Johnny Rainbow. When his lieutenants are arrested in the aftermath of a train robbery, Clyde [[PrisonEscapeArtist easily breaks them out of prison one at a time.]] Clyde's master plan is to have his men [[FalseFlagOperation all disguise themselves as Inspector Clouseau]] and rob the thirteen biggest banks in Switzerland simultaneously. They do so by tricking the bank managers into thinking that they're turning the money over to Clouseau as part of a plan to trap the thieves. Clyde smuggles the money—hidden in chocolate wrappers—across the border on an inconspicuous slow-moving barge while the police focus on watching the airports. Even when Clouseau foils their getaway, Clyde and his men still escape with some of the money.
38	* MemeticMutation: Clouseau's FunnyAccent and Misprononcations (like "beump" instead of "bump"), all courtesy of Creator/PeterSellers.
39	** "I would like a damburgah!" for Creator/SteveMartin's Clouseau in the reboot.
40	** Dreyfus getting his TwitchyEye because of Clouseau and trying to kill the latter.
41	** The hilarious fights between Clouseau and Cato.
42	* MisBlamed: ''Trail'' and ''Curse'' came in for a lot of criticism over the apparent decision to re-hire Creator/DavidNiven as Sir Charles Lytton (rather than just bringing back Creator/ChristopherPlummer) and then have Creator/RichLittle overdub his weak voice. However, according to Creator/RobertWagner, who played Sir Charles's nephew George, Niven's voice actually ''was'' still quite audible during filming; the actual problem was that Niven's health deteriorated sharply after that, leaving him bedridden and unable to speak by the time they needed to do ADR looping. And while they could theoretically have just dumped Sir Charles's scenes from ''Trail'', as they aren't essential to the plot, it would have been a much bigger problem with ''Curse'', to the point where Blake Edwards' choices boiled down to either hiring a sound-alike to overdub Niven's lines, or reshooting the film's entire third act.
43	* MoralEventHorizon: Dreyfus [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope jumped off the slippery slope]] in Film/AShotInTheDark when he kills 4 innocent bystanders and blows up five other murderers and one blackmailer trying to kill Clouseau. In [[Film/TheReturnOfThePinkPanther ''Return'']], he inadvertently kills his psychiatrist when imagining himself strangling Clouseau to death, shoots Francois in the arm mistaking a real gun for his lighter (AGAIN), and kills the film's BigBad when Clouseau ducks to check his fly. Finally, in [[Film/ThePinkPantherStrikesAgain ''Strikes Again'']], he escapes the insane asylum and, after another failed attempt to kill Clouseau, goes Bond Villain and threatens to destroy the world unless they kill Clouseau, destroys the United Nations building, and arguably ruins the life of a good scientist. When he had Professor Fassbender kidnapped and forced to build a DisintegratorRay [[IHaveYourWife using Fassbender's daughter Margo as leverage]], therefore forcing Fassbender to be an accomplice against his own free will, the Professor likely got arrested along with Dreyfus' surviving henchmen, who followed Dreyfus willingly unlike the Professor. He likely was able to get a reduced sentence to help prosecute Dreyfus' henchmen since Fassbender wanted nothing to do with Dreyfus' madness and criminal gang anyway, but with Dreyfus destroyed (assuming [[Film/RevengeOfThePinkPanther Revenge]] and [[{{Sequelitis}} the post-Peter Sellers sequels]] [[CanonDiscontinuity didn't happen]]), Jean Tournier killed pretending to be Clouseau in order to try killing Clouseau himself (despite Dreyfus' warning), and [[MutualKill one of the kidnappers killed by Fassbender's butler Jarvis after mortally wounding Jarvis]], the sentence wouldn't be reduced as much. So Margo would have to spend time without her father, not to mention dealing with the murder of their butler, all thanks to that raving lunatic Dreyfus!
44	* MyRealDaddy:
45	** While Creator/BlakeEdwards was the creator,[[note]](Technically co-creator with Maurice Richlin, who never worked on any of the films after the first)[[/note]] producer and director of the original film series, just about everyone will agree that it likely wouldn't even have gotten past the first film without the involvement of Creator/PeterSellers.
46	** Likewise, while Creator/DePatieFrelengEnterprises created the animated titles for the first film, Creator/RichardWilliams' title sequences for ''Return'' and ''Strikes Again'' are the ones remembered most fondly by fans.
47	* QuestionableCasting: Creator/SteveMartin as Clouseau. Creator/KevinKline would've been the better choice to play Clouseau in the reboot, but for some reason he was cast as Dreyfus.
48	* ReplacementScrappy:
49	** Two, in Clifton Sleigh (in ''Curse'') and Jacques Gambrelli/Clouseau Jr. (in ''Son of''), since both characters and actors were fighting a losing battle with the memory of Clouseau. Many fans didn't appreciate it very well that there could be other people like Clouseau in the world. However, Clifton and Jacques II are a bit more sane and sophisticated then Clouseau Sr., and are simply klutzy while Clouseau is a total fool.
50	** For some fans and/or critics, anyone who is not Creator/PeterSellers and still gets to play Clouseau. YMMV, though Creator/AlanArkin and Creator/SteveMartin portrayed Clouseau very well, Sellers is and always will be the one and only Clouseau. ''Trail of'' even lampshades this at the beginning of the credits with a tribute message to Sellers saying "To Peter, the one and only inspector Clouseau."
51	* SeasonalRot: ''Trail'', ''Curse'' and ''Son'' all exhibit how bad the series is without Peter Sellers.
52	* {{Sequelitis}}: Exhibited several of the symptoms listed at the trope entry in the 1970s films, but no one seemed to mind much until Sellers was gone.
53	** 1968's ''Inspector Clouseau'' is this towards ''The Pink Panther'' and ''A Shot in the Dark'' for many fans, simply for not featuring Sellers and Creator/BlakeEdwards.
54	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The thoughts on the original series after Creator/PeterSellers died.
55	* ToughActToFollow: The franchise has had a notoriously tough time continuing on without Creator/PeterSellers. Although several attempts to continue the franchise were made, most of them underperformed at the box office and receive mostly negative reviews from critics and audiences. Even those who like the later films can agree that Peter Sellers is what made the first 5 films work so well and that without him, it's just not the same. It's gotten to where several actors who were considered to play Clouseau post Sellers have declined the role entirely, simply because they know they can't fill Sellers' shoes.
56	* ValuesDissonance: In the Sellers films, Clouseau often refers to Cato as "you yellow x" or "my yellow x". The reboot dropped Cato and replaced him with Ponton, a French policeman, and the second film makes Clouseau an insensitive lecher who [[EqualOpportunityOffender blatantly stereotypes everyone he meets by nationality or ethnicity]], and plays it for laughs.[[note]]Although ask some people, it's a somewhat popular stereotype of the French to pinpoint one aspect of someone's origins, be it ethnic or class, and use it against them. In the remake, Clouseau drills Ponton on his entire family history, generation after generation of which were involved in police or military work. When he goes back as far as his fifth generation, who were farmers, Clouseau calls him a simple farm boy.[[/note]]
57	[[/folder]]
58
59	[[folder:The cartoons]]
60	* AdaptationDisplacement: While the original live action films are still generally well known, general audiences nowadays tend to be more familiar with the cartoons than they are with the films. This is especially the case amongst younger audiences, many of which grew up watching the cartoons over the films and thus, are not as familiar with the films as older audiences are.
61	* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: In "the Pink Package Plot", is that AngryGuardDog only doing his job or did he realize all along that package is a bomb?
62	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
63	** Of course, the classic jazzy theme by Music/HenryMancini is present here as well and plays in most of the cartoons.
64	** The groovy, upbeat original intro for the first season of ''[[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bii-PIGprv8 The Pink Panther Show]]'' from 1969.
65	** The [[https://youtu.be/ErzFTZ_zVhc intro]] to the 1993 cartoon, which is an upbeat rendition of the classic theme.
66	** While ''Pink Panther and Sons'' is considered by many to be the worst animated series related to the character, most fans will admit that [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3xSEZw7_Mw the theme song]] is pretty awesome.
67	* BizarroEpisode: ''Hamm-N-Eggz'', ''Voodoo Man'', ''7 Manly Men''. The original series itself had quite a few of these (hell, the entire series itself could be considered a Bizarro Episode for Western animation as a whole), and a few even have [[GainaxEnding Gainax Endings]], like for example Pink S.W.A.T.: [[spoiler:the Panther tries to vacuum up a fly that's been pestering him the whole episode, but the vacuum ends up vacuuming the Panther, the background and then ''itself''.]]
68	* DesignatedVillain:
69	** The Little Man/Big Nose can qualify as this, especially in the early shorts; a lot of the time, he's just doing his own thing when the Pink Panther interrupts everything, and he suddenly becomes prone to a majority of the slapstick in the cartoons.
70	** The dog in "Slink Pink" is certainly aggressive towards Pink Panther, but it's hard to fault him; he's simply trying to protect his master from an intruder, and keeps getting on the wrong end of his master's rolled-up newspaper thanks to Pink's trickery.
71	* GeniusBonus: In ''Pink at First Sight,'' Pink Panther lip-syncs to an opera song to impress the owner of the delivery service. The song in question is "Vesti la giubba" from ''Theatre/{{Pagliacci}}'', in which Canio, a clown, sings about his depression over his wife cheating on him. Pink Panther is also a usually-comical figure who is feeling depressed due to love-related issues (though in this case, it's that he doesn't have someone to love at all.)
72	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: The original shorts were almost entirely free of dialogue, which gave them a massive cross-cultural appeal because the humor needed no translation. It was by far the most successful in Europe as many generations there fondly recall the trippy exploits of the Panther.
73	* GrowingTheBeard: As the series progressed, so did the quality of writing.
74	* HarsherInHindsight: Rich Little, who voiced the Pink Panther at the end of "Sink Pink" and in "Pink Ice", had to dub an extremely ill David Niven in ''Trail'' and ''Curse''.
75	* HoYay: In ''The New Pink Panther Show'': Manly Man, and Eggz the chicken from ''Hamm-N-Eggz'', who falls into CampGay territory.
76	* MorePopularSpinoff: The cartoons are far more popular and widely beloved amongst audiences than the film series it spun off from. Especially amongst younger audiences. Nowadays, they're often the first thing people think of when thinking ''The Pink Panther'' as opposed to the films (perhaps not helping is that [[Film/AShotInTheDark what is widely held to be the best and funniest movie in the series]] doesn't have "Pink Panther" in the title).
77	* SeasonalRot: A mild case with the shorts produced for ''The All-New Pink Panther Show'', which don't experience anywhere ''near'' the drop-off in quality that the latter live-action films did, but suffer from cheaper animation, less memorable gags, and largely ditching Henry Mancini's theme in favor of less memorable original music.
78	* {{Squick}}: The hot dogs sold by Wanda's Wieners in "Wiener Takes All" - they're black, shriveled and always buzzing with flies.
79	* TearJerker: "Pink Daddy": A stork mistakenly delivers a baby crocodile to the Pink Panther's home. Despite all the difficulties it causes him, he does his best to raise it, only for it to eventually run off and find its real parents. Rather than be relieved, the poor panther anxiously tries to reclaim it. As the stork arrives to clear things up, the child finally reunites with its tearfully happy mother. The rejected panther's angry reaction does little to hide that he has been terribly hurt. The stork watches and silently shares his pity with the viewers.
80	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks:
81	** The LaughTrack added in syndication did the later theatrical shorts no favors. Not helped at all by it being used in a series with almost no dialogue, which made it even more distracting and annoying than usual. "Better" still is that there appear to be no clean versions in existence anymore, so all home video releases include the laugh tracks.
82	** Anytime the Pink Panther is given dialogue tends to be met with this reception from fans who tend to prefer him as a HeroicMime. The 90s cartoon being the most infamous example.
83	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
84	** "Psychedelic Pink" is truly a product of [[TheSixties the late 1960s]]; just the title alone gives it away!
85	** "Think Before You Pink" has the Pink Panther trying to cross a busy intersection with a pedestrian crossing signal that uses the words "DON'T WALK" and "WALK." After the 20th century ended, the number of pedestrian signals with said words began to quickly decrease, due to many of them being replaced with modern signals using orange hand and white walking body symbols (along with countdown timers at busier or more dangerous intersections).
86	* ValuesDissonance: "The Pink Package Plot" from 1968 involves the Pink Panther forced at gunpoint by a terrorist to deliver a ticking TimeBomb package to a foreign embassy. Just the setup alone wouldn't fly in today's terrorism-paranoid world (especially not after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks).
87	* TheWoobie: ''Pink at First Sight'' is one of the few times Pink Panther ever seems depressed, and boy, does it hit hard. You can feel his misery at the beginning when he walks past all the happy couples on Valentine's Day, while he's seemingly the only one alone. Then there's that shot of him sitting on his bed in a dark, dingy apartment...
88	[[/folder]]

Context YMMV / ThePinkPanther