The Pink Panther
dir. Shawn Levy
Sony Pictures

Bernard-Henri Levy, author of the new book "American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville," has rippled the waters of Lake Wobegon. Garrison Keillor took to the front page of The New York Times Book Review to lay some smack down on BHL's "splatter-paint prose style" and college sophomore grandiosity, accusing him of parading freaks, fatties and fanatics as European journalists have done since America's post-World War II ascension. Keillor is unimpressed by the Frenchman's insights into ritualistic flag-folding (it's a "fetish") and Los Angeles (it's polluted). "Thanks for coming. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. For your next book, tell us about those riots in France, the cars burning in the suburbs of Paris. What was that all about? Were fat people involved?"

Christopher Hitchens, for one, is a little hard on Keillor (he calls him "vulgar"), but each critic is a little extreme. Perhaps Levy lacks the intellectual rigor of a Derrida or Foucault, and maybe his ideas aren't fully formed, but "Vertigo" sometimes succeeds in its short bursts of impression. Levy aggressively debunks certain American cliches in a conscious effort to achieve anti-anti-Americanism. His stances on political correctness (there's something admirable in "training the spotlight on minorities and victims") and American religion (it enables our secularism and staves off radicalism) debunk conventional wisdom, even if those ideas won't endear him to other French intellectuals. However, his observations on the Mall of America and the National Baseball Hall of Fame are so obvious that he feels the need to puff them up into Ken Burns-esque mythology. When BHL has even less to say, he resorts to banalities: The politics of Sharon Stone, lap dances in Vegas.

This is where Keillor blasts BHL, coming off like the Francophile BHL tries to debunk — in other words, Keillor voices the cliché he perceives in Levy's book. Ironically, this is precisely the point in which Keillor and Levy intersect, said best by BHL on "The Daily Show:" "The misunderstanding between the French and Americans is based on a war of clichés."

Enter Steve Martin's Inspector Clouseau. Any comparisons to Peter Sellers' performances are simply misplaced — this is not what Martin has on his mind. Rather, Martin almost rewrote this material into a funny and interesting movie with something to say about Franco-American relations. Everyone has asked why, why, why remake The Pink Panther, but I think the answer is fairly obvious: America needs to see the cliché it's made of France. The problem is that the movie isn't entirely committed to this premise. It has some interesting riffs on French/American clichés, but it isn't interested in creating something other than a string of gags. Director Shawn Levy (both Cheaper By the Dozen remakes, Big Fat Liar) simply doesn't have the vision or the ambition to pull off a grand statement about France and America. Shawn Levy doesn't have the hubris of Bernard-Henri Levy (no relation).

Instead, this movie asks us to laugh at Clouseau's nasally pronunciation that that he wants to conduct the "een-ves-tee-gay-shown" for all of France. Still, the movie has moments of transcendence: We recognize Clouseau's patriotism, and it just seems downright un-American to mock one's devotion to his country — even if it is France. It's as if Kevin Kline's Chief Inspector Dreyfuss, with his prominent mustache, is the Gallic snob, and Clouseau is the workaday French cop — the middle-class underdog that we Americans immediately identify with.

But the movie doesn't take this characterization all the way. Rather, like the opening credits (which are inspired by Bugs and Elmer Fudd), we get a cartoon of France. Clouseau can't parallel park his Smart Car. He fights for justice because "Fwance eez Fwance." Martin struts in front of Parisian landmarks wearing a beret. He brandishes a mini Swiss Army knife. When he finally catches the killer, Clouseau rattles off statute after statute, dipping into the Russian code to justify an arrest. He makes a fool of Inspector Dreyfuss because he knows more laws.

Politics does waft through the proceedings. I don't ever remember John Wayne, Dirty Harry or Ah-nold ever reciting a statute. But here, the law is played for comedy — like it's an afterthought to justice. During an interrogation, Clouseau plays Good Cop, exits, and then comes back in to play Bad Cop. Amusing, but then Clouseau electrocutes his balls — as if to say, look, this Frenchie can't find a jewel thief, nonetheless fight al-Qaeda, because he can't even torture right. Later, Clive Owen cameos as Agent 006 (not quite Bond, you see), and he stands in for Britain, kicking ass while Clouseau deliberates in a posh casino restaurant.

The Pink Panther really misses its opportunity for greatness when Clouseau's een-vest-ee-gay-shown takes him to New York City to interrogate Beyonce Knowles. Here is where we get the best scene in the whole movie: Clouseau — wearing an I Heart NY hat, nose at first scrunched in disgust — biting into and discovering the unalloyed joy of a hamburger. The world spins, the clouds part, and the bumbling Frenchman chews approvingly. If this entire New York sequence had been fleshed out, Martin might have stumbled onto something funny and potent. Here's the worst of American Francophilia discovering that America has its virtues. Likewise, his partner makes easy work of some New York thugs while Clouseau air-karates beside him. We're not fatty war-mongering slobs; they're not limp-wristed surrender monkeys.

But The Pink Panther sells out. There's a sequence where Martin humorously answers a telemarketing call for Beyonce, and then it's back to the homeland. How this movie doesn't end up at the United Nations building, I have no idea. Clouseau marshalling an international coalition in the heart of New York to take on international criminals — isn't this what the Chief Inspector Chirac Dreyfuss ultimately wants? Isn't this Clouseau's path to DeGaulle-level heroism? What if Clouseau became an unwitting hero in America, winning the hearts and minds of Rudy Giuliani's ranks, taking this new mutual respect to the justice-minded Gallic people? Inspector Clouseau, the bumbling, flimsy French policeman who's overly concerned about protocol, represents the American stereotype of French justice. He lands in America, bullying its way toward revenge rather than justice. But The Pink Panther doesn't entirely defeat the clichés. Inspector Clouseau becomes a pratfalling Bernard-Henri Levy.

— Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)