Word: clouseau
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Adding to the hilarity is the dean of students, Mr. Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), who has decided that Ferris, the darling of his school, has made a fool of him one too many times. Rooney is modeled on a mixture of Inspector Clouseau and his boss, who, as you may remember, in one movie aspired to kill his clueless detective (you even get to hear a refrain of the Pink Panther theme...
Though Rooney doesn't end up in a funny farm like Clouseau's boss did, he does end up covered with dirt, bitten by Ferris's dog, and beaten up by his younger sister. Jones, who spends much of his time leering with pathological hatred of Ferris, gives a fine performance as the hapless dean. Of the other members of the cast, Alan Ruck is superlative in his supporting role, and Jennifer Grey is also good as Ferris's bratty and jealous younger sister...
Searches of John's two-story brick-and-wood home in Norfolk, as well as his houseboat, single-engine plane, camper, two cars and the offices of his three private-detective agencies, turned up a collection of gadgets and paraphernalia worthy of both Inspector Clouseau and James Bond. It included a clerical collar, fake IDs and business cards, a .357 magnum pistol, a walking cane that contains a gun, another that conceals a dagger and yet a third that holds hidden vials. When authorities opened his safe-deposit box, No. 257 at a Norfolk branch of the Bank of Virginia...
...duty. The problem with this theme in Edwards's work is that his characters can get mighty boring mighty fast. Even the protean Peter Sellers could not save the Panther films from a sense of mechanical flatness that was a reflection of the monotony of the protagonist's character. Clouseau was an original idiot, nothing more. When Sellers played a truly vacuous character in Hal Ashby's Being There, he could give the film an ironic tenderness that the Panther faces could have used. Perhaps Edwards, whose films have no other virtue than that they are funny, can only imagine...
Kirk Douglas, as Spur, is appealingly folksy, despite a poor makeup job that leaves him with a Clouseau-like costume nose. He is equally convincing in his dual role as the rancher Harrison, capturing the character's stiff formality and paternal desire to raise his way-ward daughter as "a lady." Young Burlinson, with his impish smile and refreshing honesty, is certainly a find, and Jack Thompson, who will seem familiar for his role as the defense attorney in "Breaker Morant," plays a half-cowboy, "half-bloodhound" tracker with panache...