The Party (1968) 99m.
Peter Sellers and director Blake Edwards decided to take the Inspector Clouseau concept from their Pink Panther collaborations and run with it in this simple but funny cult comedy. There is no real story, just a series of gags and routines that unfold within the confines of a swanky but dry Hollywood party. Sellers removes the bumptious aspects of Clouseau and keeps the walking one-man-disaster premise for his creation Hrundi V. Bakshi, an Indian actor who finds himself accidentally invited to a producer's party after wreaking havoc on the set of his GUNGA DIN remake (he literally only gets three steps from the front door before things start going wrong). Why Sellers elected to make his character Indian is a bit of a mystery as there is no reason for it in the story other than to make him a complete foreigner amongst the Hollywood set (you can spot the lines that were inserted to give his nationality some 'relevance'). I'd say that Sellers wanted to utilize his gift for mimicry and accents in a way he hadn't tried before, at least not for the length of a feature - for those of us raised on THE GOON SHOW his choice of role comes as no surprise. It may be an odd choice but it works beautifully and we do not question it: if anything, it helps cement the notion in our mind that he and fellow outsider Claudine Longet (playing an aspiring French actress) belong together by the film's end.
Film has many funny gags but slides in a couple of places. Sellers is best when he is on the move and liable to get himself into trouble - when he is seated at a dinner table halfway through the movie the action instead must transfer to a tipsy waiter. Similarly, the slapstick gets more hysterical and less effective when Sellers disappears for much of the movie's final quarter - having characters repeatedly take pratfalls into a swimming pool is just plain lazy. That's not to say the film still can't be enjoyed - it's just that you have to switch gears from watching a Peter Sellers film to watching a 60s time capsule (the finale has go-go dancing, a brightly-painted baby elephant, and a sea of soap bubbles). Film isn't just for Sellers fans - kids will enjoy the gadget-laden house and relate to his child-like reactions to the problems he causes (he tries to hide the evidence or disappear from the scene). The party hosts' house may remind you of the tacky, modernised home in Jacques Tati's MON ONCLE, just as Sellers may remind you of Tati's creation Monsieur Hulot. Regular Edwards composer Henry Mancini provided the music, and yes, pop singer Longet - remember her kitsch-but-cute 'Love is Blue'? - does get to sing in her distinctive, sugary style.
sburridge@hotmail.com
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews