hyped garbage

A Masterpiece!

The acting in this movie is really good.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Leonard Maltin gives "A Shot In The Dark" 4 stars and calls it "gaspingly hilarious", but it's really quite leisurely by today's standards. It's often funny (especially when Clouseau discusses the case with his assistant Hercule), Sellers is tops, Elke is one of the major screen goddesses of the 1960s, but the whodunit resolution is weak and rushed. The "nudist colony" sequence is a surprising tease for the period, but it takes place in what is all too obviously a soundstage, which is a little distracting. **1/2 out of 4.

I saw the original Pink Panther movie and I liked it, but didn't think it was the masterpiece like a lot of people thought it was. Well, this is considered to be even better and I certainly agree! I'm not the biggest Inspector Closeau fan, but this was a lot of fun. It helps that we escalate the slapstick and everything just keeps on going. I guess the best part is that Closeau plays it straight. Well, he at least tries to play it straight. The other characters are much more intellectual and do a better job playing it straight. It's great to see him be confronted by everyone else.Can I just say that the opening animated credits were some of the best I've ever seen? I'm surprised they didn't have, well, the Pink Panther in them. It does get a little slow in the middle, but it all pays off in the end. I realize that I'm not much of a fan of murder mysteries, but what better way than to do a parody of them? Many people do consider this the best in the whole series and of the numerous I have seen, I agree with them. It helps that Peter Sellers as Closeau is so funny. I knew the name Kato was a shout out to the Green Hornet. ***1/2

Else Sommer is the woman in Clouseau's life. She is caught red handed about six times. Someone has died and she is standing over them. It doesn't matter because he refuses to think she had anything to do with the murders. Herbert Lom plays Cloueau's long suffering boss who is always answerable for his bumbling detectives faux pas. Then there is Kato who has been trained to attack his boss at the most inopportune times. Eventually, he bumbles his way into the center of the action because he is always successful in spite of himself. Lom ends up a basket case (probably weaving them in an institution). What I love the most is the hilarious speech pattern of Clouseau, calling a bomb a "bim." Great performance by Peter Sellers in the best of the Pink Panther movies.

The first Pink Panther film was, in my view , the second best Panther film, despite having the best cast. A Shot in the Dark I laugh just thinking about it. It has Herbert Lom, a perfect foil for Clouseau, which the original Panther film lacked, and I ascribe that as the principle reason A Shot.. is better than the first film. There are films that cannot be watched a second or third time, but this isn't one of them. I must have seen this film 5 times and at this point pretty much know the dialog by heart. But it still works, partly because of the sight gags, and partly because of the Clouseau- Chief Inspector Dreyfus back and forth. "What kind of a plan?" "A plan that cannot fail." "And he killed a Cossack, a doorman and a gardener just because he was jealous!!!!!????" "Insanely jealous." The dialog is so perfectly in tune with the characters. A true comedic masterpiece, of which there are precious few, even after 100 years of film.