The Return of the Pink Panther

Fourth in the series, promisingly reuniting Edwards and Sellers with their respective careers not exactly buoyant since A Shot in the Dark ten years earlier, The Return of the Pink Panther delivers a good deal of that promise, from Richard Williams' ultra-ritzy animated credits to the four or five brilliantly timed set pieces of Clouseau-engineered mayhem. Things are shakier whenever Sellers is off-screen, and especially whenever Plummer's debonair jewel thief is on; and the movie wastes time on its jet-set locations, has too many British character actors in unfunny bit parts, and cries out for a devastating finale which never comes. But the occasional misfires, with the verbal gags rarely as inspired as the visual ones, are forgiveable in the context of Clouseau's running battles with swimming pools, a vacuum cleaner, false moustaches, gear levers that come away in the hand, and his oriental factotum-cum-sparring partner.