Okay, now I get it. We no longer care about what cinematic greats like Blake Edwards brought to the game—because there's a new game in Hollywood, and it's called "economic pressure." Wanna play? It's pretty easy: Basically, you randomly grab some excellent movie off the shelf, and remake it with a less-talented cast, a sub-par script, and half the verve. And the economic reality of such a decision is pretty persuasive: Such a project is likely to make a crap-ton of money, because there is a large enough audience to always support movies based around the central premise of old people falling on their asses.

In The Pink Panther 2, Steve Martin reprises his impersonation of Leslie Nielsen to play the bumbling Inspector Clouseau (originally played to perfection in Blake Edwards' Panther series by Peter Sellers, so I'm still confounded as to why Martin would assume he could do better—but again, that's not the point, is it?). The world's most priceless artifacts have been stolen, so Clouseau joins a "dream team" of sleuths to solve the crime, and a dearth of hilarity ensues. There's probably more to the plot, but frankly, it's all so mundane that my brain staunchly refused to retain the information.

In a nutshell, Martin spends the entire film making that pinched "ooh!" face as if someone had just kicked him in the scrabble bag, while a cast of formerly respectable actors (such as John Cleese, Lily Tomlin, Andy Garcia, and Alfred Molina) bow to the economic pressure of bringing home a paycheck—no matter how ridiculous and old this film makes them look. A certain type of audience will undoubtedly enjoy Martin's lazy pratfalls and mushy comic choreography, and to them I say, "Enjoy." Your disposable income and the current film industry are a match made in heaven.