Short Review

Bumbling Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin) joins an international team of detectives on the trail of a daring criminal who’s been stealing priceless artifacts—the Shroud of Turin, Magna Carta, the Imperial Sword of Japan, etc. What made the Peter Sellers Clouseau movies work (when they worked, which wasn’t all that often) was that Sellers never seemed to be trying to be funny. But here, Martin (who pitched in on the script with Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber) is obviously trying with all his might—in vain. Devoid of laughs or suspense, the movie seems to have been thrown together as an excuse for a European vacation for the cast (John Cleese, Emily Mortimer, Alfred Molina, Andy Garcia, Aishwarya Rai, Lily Tomlin, Jeremy Irons, etc.). Any fun they may have had fails to survive on the screen.