Film is a lively, entertaining and episodic story of bank robbers. Good scripting, better acting and topnotch direction get the most out of the material.
Clouseau is Alan Arkin this time, instead of Peter Sellers, and it's hard to say whether we gain or lose. Arkin flounders a little in the stiff French accent he inherited from Sellers. But in his movements and timing, he's Sellers' equal.
25
TV Guide Magazine
TV Guide Magazine
Talented though he is, Arkin cannot fill Sellers' shoes, especially when hampered by a script which relies on cheap laughs and lots of accidental death, and Yorkin's pedestrian direction.
A comedy so uninspired, so relentlessly awful that one occasionally laughs for it—more like a moo or a snort or a gagging noise—just to interrupt it a little or help it out of the room.