There should be a new rule in Hollywood: no remaking comedies!
And they should call it The Steve Martin Rule. I’m going to write a screenplay for a remake of The Jerk, and I will try to make as grotesquely bad as Martin’s The Pink Panther revisits.
When I saw the remake of the classic 1967 comedy Bedazzled, – the original written by and starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook – back in 2000, and proceeded to set fire to the movie theater as I left in bedazzled horror, I thought that was as bad as it was ever going to get.
Then came horseshit like The Honeymooners and Who’s Your Caddy?, and, of course, the bevy of horrendous Steve Martin thieveries.
Don’t remake classic comedies! Old sci-fi films, slasher flicks, action movies – fine. Knock yourself out. But lately I’ve been reading about remakes planned for Arthur and Slapshot. No! Stop it, Hollywood! And stop it, Steve Martin! The In-Laws was bad enough, but your raping of Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards must end!
I want to see someone like Chris Kattan or Jimmy Fallon remake and butcher The Jerk or The Man with Two Brains. See how you like it, King Tut!
The Pink Panther 2 will no doubt make over $100 million because people are sheep and, even in these hard economic times, what are they going to do? Read a book?
Whatever the outcome, I was delighted to read some of the reviews on RottenTomatoes.com. After combing through them, I’ve presented my favorites below. I’ll be waiting for The Pink Panther 3.
“Here’s hoping Martin now moves on, perhaps to revive some other defunct franchise.”
Jim Slotek
Jam! Movies
“When The Pink Panther 2 repeats the “ham-bur-gare” gag from the first film, you know you’re in for a long 90 minutes.”
Christian Toto
What Would Toto Watch?
“Not content with having trashed the memory of Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards once…Steve Martin takes up the task again, with results that are equally bad.”
Frank Swietek
One Guy’s Opinion
“Pathetic… The lack of imagination and inspiration is stunning.”
Bill Gibron
Filmcritic.com
“The Pink Panther 2 is an improvement over The Pink Panther, but that’s kind of like saying your new boyfriend Bernie Madoff is an improvement over your last boyfriend, Jeffrey Dahmer”
Willie Waffle
WaffleMovies.com
“I have seen taxidermy livelier than this moribund mess which further sullies the reputation of everyone associated with this unwelcome sequel.”
Nell Minow
Beliefnet
“A work of slapsticky, accent-y gar-bage, The Pink Panther 2 is so brainlessly uninventive that it actually seems determined to sully the legacy of Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers’s original series.”
Nick Schager
Slant Magazine
Should you think only critics from little-known places are trashing this movie:
“One can only hope that something good is coming from all the bad movies that Steve Martin has been appearing in.”
Peter Hartlaub
San Francisco Chronicle
“Recycling bins have fresher content than this listless exercise in check-the-boxes moviemaking.”
Colin Covert
Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Remember when Martin was funny?”
Claudia Puig
USA Today
“The soundtrack makes generous use of trombones to indicate humor.”
Joe Morgenstern
Wall Street Journal
“Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?”
Peter Travers
Rolling Stone
“There’s a sort of desperation at work here.”
Betsy Sharkey
Los Angeles Times
“What is our reward for the collective effort of this prestigious assembly? One of the most dreadfully unnecessary movies in recent memory.”
Stephanie Zacharek
Salon.com
“I laughed once, at an unexpected gag, involving a ricocheting bullet, that was a nice play on an old gunfighting cliche. The rest of the film was a slow-bleeding gut shot.”
Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
“Plays like a series of disconnected, hit-or-miss skits in a cut-rate Saturday Night Live.”
Michael O’Sullivan
Washington Post
“[I]f half-hearted remakes of fondly remembered films (and their still more lifeless sequels) are one of the most acute ills currently plaguing Hollywood, [Steve] Martin is arguably the primary vector by which the malady is transmitted.”
Christopher Orr New Republic
My very favorite review comes from a site called Richmond.com.
“It woulda been less insulting for Martin to dig up Peter Sellars’ corpse, build a bone xylophone out of the skeletal remains, and bang out Henry Mancini’s “Pink Panther” theme during the Super Bowl halftime show.”
Mike Ward
Richmond.com
Finally, a critic named Cole Smithey says it best:
“The only good side effect here is that it can remind audiences of Peter Seller’s truly inspired comic films. If you want to see a “Pink Panther” movie, you’ve still got to watch the originals.”
Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com
