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THE PINK PANTHER

Hello. This is capnwacky.com co-founder Brodie H. Brockie, filling in for
Zonar with a Review of a Movie I Have No Intention of Seeing. I'm sure
Zonar has a lot of things he could say about Steve Martin's new version of
" The Pink Panther", but there are a few things he could not say too.
Things that need to be said.

Anyone who has been reading Zonar's reviews for a little while here knows
that Zonar hates movies - almost ALL movies. Maybe there are some movies
Zonar has enjoyed or actors who he respects, but he never mentions those.
While I can agree with Zonar in the Hollywood subjects us to an tremendous
amount of crap, I can also tell you that there are a lot of movies and
entertainers that I enjoy.

Steve Martin used to be one of them.

Capable of creating enjoyably goofy lowbrow humor like "The Jerk" and "The
Man With Two Brains," Martin always managed to seem smart no matter how
dumb the material. That combination of silliness and wit was a perfect
mix for Martin's stand-up material, produced in the seventies, but still
as funny today as when it was first pressed to vinyl. So inventive, so
creative was Steve Martin that we look back now on the early years of
Saturday Night Live and think of him as a key ingredient of the show's
wild, raucous success, despite the fact that Martin was never as
cast-member of the show, just a frequent host.

So how, now, are we to reconcile our love and admiration for Steve Martin
with the fact that he is starring, now, in a new Pink Panther movie as
Inspector Clouseau, a character created and perfected by Peter Sellers?
Steve Martin has become a mainstay of the Hollywood remake machine, the
epitome of entertainment laziness and creative bankruptcy.

" Father of the Bride", "Father of the Bride II," "Sgt. Bilko," "The
Out-of-Towners," "Cheaper By the Dozen," "Cheaper By the Dozen II" and now
" The Pink Panther."

Six remakes and one adaptation of an old TV show. In between those, safe,
crass, drek like "Bringing Down the House" and "Looney Tunes: Back In
Action" while occurrences of watchable performances in movies like "The
Spanish Prisoner" and "Bowfinger" grew rarer and rarer until they finally
stopped.

And now "The Pink Panther." A series that was repeating itself already
before Sellers died and did not need to be resurrected once with Roberto
Benigni as Clouseau's son and most certainly does not need to be
resurrected once again with Martin aping Sellers.

Peter Sellers would never have made a movie playing one of Steve Martin's
characters.

I like to pretend that this person is not Steve Martin. I like to pretend
that, after making "L.A. Story" in 1991, the real Steve Martin was
abducted by an alien race suffering from a severe comedy draught and
replaced by a robot replica with a faulty sense of taste. We've been
watching that robot try to be Steve for 15 years, while our Steve is out
there somewhere in the farthest reaches of space, still blazing new trails
and making intelligent races laugh.

I suppose it doesn't seem very realistic. But had you told me in 1991
that Steve Martin would one day be starring in a remake of "The Pink
Panther," I wouldn't have thought that seemed very realistic either.
Thank you, Steve Martin, for years and years of top-notch comedy. Now
stop. I'm begging you.

Back to you, Zonar.

FINAL DESTINATION 3

I'm not even a native of the planet Earth and I have a better idea of what the word "final" means than these filmmakers.

DATE MOVIE

Please note that the "date" in the title is singular. This is the movie take someone to when you never, ever want to see them again.

BAMBI II

Disney's final traditionally animated movie (promise?) is a sequel to the child-scarring Disney masterpiece in which an adorable young deer watches his mother shot by hunters. To up the trauma-level for today's more desensitized viewers, Bambi II's mother is not only shot on screen, but we continue to watch as the hunters skin her, cook her, eat her, digest her, and then poop out bits of her the next day. This movie was funded jointly by the Walt Disney Company, the Therapists Association of America, and Ted Nugent.

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS

"We've traced the call, ma'am. It's coming from inside your house!" Someone got paid for putting that into a script and pretending that they wrote it. Astounding.

"To be or not to be? That is the Question."

There. I just wrote that.


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