I went to see The Pink Panther more of less expecting it to be bad, given all the terrible reviews. But I am a mentor for a young girl, and on our outing that day, she chose that movie over a few other possibilities. While I can't say the movie was great or as hilariously funny as the original, it certainly did have some funny moments. I would have rather sat through that movie than through some movies I've hated that critics raved about. Some of the humor was sophmoric, but so are some of the bits on "The Daily Show." I don't think the movie nor Steve Martin deserve such derision.

appletree

No one so far writing about the new Pink Panther movie seems to have a clue as to the true genius of the original. Or, to be more specific, the genius of the first two Blake Edwards’ films. After that things went largely off the rails.

Clouseau wants to be Cary Grant, and is utterly incapable of it. Bumbling is his essence, his soul. All of the small acts of aplomb, of polish, of savoir faire, of suave sophistication, that were second nature to a Cary Grant, Clouseau will attempt, and he will fail - every time. It isn’t that he will run afoul of some vast, complicated piece of machinery – a mistake made so often in the later films - he can’t bring off opening a door (or a drawer), reaching for a cigarette, or, memorably, spinning a globe. He longs to do the simplest of things with the assured grace of a Cary Grant, and fails at every turn, often with glorious comic results. Quintessential Clouseau: in A Shot in the Dark he is wrestled to the ground by a rack of pool cues.

The longing to look good in the many minor, but constant, endeavors of our lives is something we all live with and hope to survive with at least some measure of accomplishment. They say comedy is someone else’s pain. Clouseau does not need to suffer the spectacular thump of a great prat fall; he suffers instead the thousand humiliations of small acts gone amuck, and so helps exorcise our own anxieties about these passages of daily life. Again and again, he sails out with eager confidence, only to have his face rubbed in it once more. The Don Quixote of trivial quests.

The Legend of Ron Burgundy is a great comedy.... and Ferrel's short video on Bush giving a global warming speech is also ... great.

Don't tell us about the has been's.... who are the new guys?

Here I go, ranting on about things I don't know about... I have found a home. :D

Most funny people, comedians especially, are wounded, tortured souls who feel a compelling desire to be noticed. Early on, they notice being funny is much more rewarding than being a sad, tortured windbag, so funny it is. Also, funny people get beat up less.

When successful comedians get older, they feel it is okay to finally show in inner-wounded widdle person, which, for the most part, is very unfunny. It is also unpracticed, as it was kept bottled up. Therefore, not as good. Add that to the fact that we want them to still be funny... bad news.

As for Steve Martin... I never really found him all that funny. His SNL material was for stoners. The Jerk was funny... if you were stoned. Some of his lighter comedies were okay, and everything I have seen him in trying to be serious is kind of painful. His banjo playing is, however, exquisite.

Steve Martin is at his least funny when he tries to do anything that involves an accent or ethnicity (My Blue Heaven, Pink Panther, that movie with Queen Latifa). My Blue Heaven is 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back... woe is me indeed.

John Cleese once said that all artists have about a ten year period of peak creativity which is followed by gradual or sudden decline. A look at the comedians of old bears this out: The Marx Bros between 1930 and 1937 created "Duck Soup", "Horse Feathers ", "A Night at the Opera", and "A Day at the Races". This was followed by inferior product like the "Big Store" and "Go West". Chaplin between 1925 and 1936 made "the Gold Rush", "The Circus", "City Lights", and "Modern Times" followed by notable failures "the Great Dictator" and "Monseiur Verdoux". That brings us to Woody Allen the only truly great comedian mentioned in the article.Steve Martin and Albert Brooks are minor talents in comparison. Between 1969 and 1979 Allen made his best films: "Sleeper", "Love and Death", "Annie Hall" , and perhaps his greatest "Manhatten". He certainly hasn't made anything close to as good as "Manhatten" and lately seems to be just be going through the motions. I haven't seen "Match Point" but like most of Allen's current product it gets good to great reviews usally along the lines of "his best work in years", or "Woody's back!" , this is followed by general apathy at the box office and then obscurity until the next Allen release.

While there certainly exist tons of examples of comedians gone aged and terrible, I still think it's worth noting the people who were ONCE comedians and continue to be edgy and provocative, but in other media: the already mentioned Steve Martin-as-writer is a good example, but I think a better one is Mike Nichols. "The Graduate" "Closer" wasn't, but it was a helluvalot better than "Match Point." Maybe shifting to other venues can help stave off the dry-rot: and I don't mean "other venues" like hosting the Oscars, I mean ones that require actual work.

A couple of brief hunches-I'm a very average Sunday humourist- about Woody's situation as a paradigm of the rest-after all

he's been in the game since the era of Sid Caesar and blacklisting.

Very acutely described arc of inconsistency, Stephanie-but you don't say much about

the existential gap between the headlines and the business called show -we need a

younger-sisterhood Jane Fonda on the case too - the awareness of the ever-younger movie

punter-here in the UK too

1. Editorial control by people making concessions to the Benny Hill cap on power-broking right-wing

senses of humour-their world view engenders being perpetually amused by the 'little guy' but in a regressed, terrible-twos humourless, humility-free-way they think is folksy.

A percentage of any -eg-Woody audience I've been a part of expects a laugh every 4 minutes

and laughs robotically anyway even when theres a piquant double edge to a quip.

2.The demands of the celebrity circuit ditto plus the difficulty of keeping your

stand-up roots well-oiled when any p.a becomes a big deal for someone.

3.The demands of going behind the camera as well as giving some froissant of your

influence in the script while longing to escape from 1.

4. just growing older and more careworn

5. as Oscar Levant once said discovering the Real Tinsel behind the Fake Tinsel

6. Maybe its a question of balance-as Steph said, LA Story is a masterpiece even in

imitation of Woody ...because its unafraid and not in thrall to its subject, and

has something of a mythic quality about it (like, I think, Broadway Danny Rose or

most Python). Also there's that willingness and ability to simply observe on location, eg Jacques Tati.

Defamiliarisation, eg Woody crossing the pond,is one bold way out of this,and the guy

deserves credit for being insistently self-critical, modest and real.