After the death of
Peter Sellers in 1980, writer/director
Blake Edwards assembled a new "Pink Panther" film from outtakes of Sellers as Inspector Clouseau from previous movies in the series (the result was called
The Trail of the Pink Panther) and later made two attempts to revive the series with another actor. In this case, Edwards cast
Roberto Benigni as Jacques Gambrelli, a hopelessly inept French policeman who turns out the be the illegitimate son of Inspector Clouseau. Gambrelli becomes involved with the investigation of a kidnapping involving the beautiful Princess Yasmin (Debrah Farentino) literally by accident, when he crashes into a car driven by Police Commissioner Dreyfus (
Herbert Lom). Gambrelli soon becomes smitten with Yasmin, while the investigation suggests that the kidnapping was set up by her mother, the Queen (
Shabana Azmi), and her lover, General Jaffar (Aharon Ipale).
Claudia Cardinale who played a different character in the original
Pink Panther returns, while
Burt Kwouk returns as the violent Korean manservant Cato.
Roberto Benigni's Gambrelli proved no more successful at the box office than
Ted Wass's Clouseau-like Clifton Sleigh in The Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), though after his multiple-Oscar winning success with 1998's La Vita e Bella, Roberto's probably gotten over it. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide