Why, Lord? Tell me why they do it? Why reinvent the comic wheel, remake a classic that can't be improved upon, and try to imitate the inimitably quirky personality that made it work?

		"The Pink Panther" Rating: PG for occasional crude and suggestive humor and language Starring: Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, Beyonce Knowles Director: Shawn Levy Post-Gazette Family Film Guide review of "The Pink Panther" "The Pink Panther" web site

Inspector Clouseau, the quintessential bumbling detective of Blake Edwards' "Pink Panther" capers, was and is and always will be Peter Sellers. His 21st-century usurper is Steve Martin, and watching Martin's agonizing attempt to fit the role is like watching a Wicked Stepsister try to cram her foot into Cinderella's slipper.

They said the same of Agent 007, of course: "Sean Connery IS James Bond!" -- successors need not apply. They applied anyway and, to varying degrees, pulled it off. But that was because they had something like decent scripts to work with. "Pink Panther" has no such thing, and since Martin co-wrote it with Len Blum, he has himself to half-blame.

Having shelled out a bundle for the rights, director Shawn Levy is determined to get his money's worth, shamelessly opening with the original Henry Mancini theme and cartoon credits to get us in the mood: The P.P. itself, you'll recall, is a huge, priceless diamond, nowadays set in a ring belonging to France's most celebrated soccer coach.

Quickly enough, the coach is a dead ringer, the Panther is stolen, and the victim's pop-star girlfriend Xania (Beyonce Knowles) is a prime suspect. Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) wants the glory of solving the crime for himself -- but not just yet. To make sure it stays unsolved for a while, he puts hapless Clouseau in charge of the investigation and assigns him a partner named Ponton (Jean Reno), whose real function is to inform Dreyfus of their wild-goose chases through Paris and New York.

"Don't you find it odd the body fell precisely within the chalk line?" says Clouseau. Nothing gets past him, except the possibility that the body preceded the chalk line.

Martin delivers such precious few chuckles as there are. But there's no sustained hilarity, and only two truly funny scenes. The first is Clouseau's session with an American speech teacher and his chronic inability to say, "I would like to buy a hamburger." The second is his and Reno's disguise as backup dancers camouflaged to look like the curtains in a Beyonce club routine.

But overall, the comedy is low to the point of subterranean -- full of head-bonking, falling, flatulence and the like. Not much for grown-up amusement. On the other hand, the 5-year-old boy sitting next to me laughed heartily from start to finish at the physical slapshtick, much as I remember heartily laughing at the Three Stooges. I still love the Stooges and sophomoric sight gags, but in 15-, not 90-minute doses. This film should have received a new RK-10 rating (Restricted to Kids under 10) with the advisory, "Contains material not suitable for adults."

Certainly not suitable for Kevin Kline. So uproarious in "A Fish Called Wanda," Kline is badly miscast and unfunny here in a badly written, unfunny variation on Herbert Lom's Dreyfus. Beyonce is a beautifully irrelevant adornment, as she was in "Austin Powers: Goldmember," but her dazzling smile and seductive voice brighten the proceedings, especially with a song called "A Woman Like Me."

Which brings us, alas, to our star. I've loved Steve Martin ever since his Heinz Hall triumph in 1980, when he came out, looked around at the opulent gilt and red velvet, and grumbled, "I wish they'd stop booking me into these toilets." But his genius is the creation of his own characters, not the re-creation of somebody else's. We want to see him become the Jerk or King Tut or a wild-and-crazy Czechoslovak guy or one of the Three Amigos, or to re-invent Cyrano from the page, but not to impersonate Pee-wee Herman or Peter Sellers from the screen.

He and Levy have turned a silk purse into a sow's ear. The pink of this "Panther" is for embarrassment.

PANTHER CLUES

Peter Sellers

Inspector Jacques Clouseau, "The Pink Panther" (1963)

French Inspector Jacques Clouseau heads to Switzerland to pursue the infamous playboy/jewel thief "The Phantom," who has eyes on the "Pink Panther," the world's largest diamond. Sellers would play the bungling Clouseau in five films for director Blake Edwards.

Roberto Benigni

Gendarme Jacques Gambrelli, "Son of the Pink Panther" (1993)

This sequel begins 30 years after "A Shot in the Dark," in which Clouseau helped clear Maria Gambrelli (Claudia Cardinale) of a murder charge. Police Commissioner Dreyfus (Herbert Lom from the original series and Clouseau's nemesis) falls for Maria but is terrified that her policeman son, another bungling Jacques, is Clouseau's offspring as well. (Benigni is an Oscar winner for "Life Is Beautiful.")

Steve Martin

Inspector Jacques Clouseau, "The Pink Panther" (2006)

In this prequel to the original film, the klutzy detective with the bad accent must solve the murder of a famous soccer coach and find out who stole the infamous "Pink Panther" diamond, with Kevin Kline as his Dreyfus and Beyonce as the beauty Xania. (The original theme is used.)

Music

Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther" theme did not get an Oscar nomination -- he won the Academy Award for "Days of Wine and Roses" that same year -- but it is among his most-recognized works.

DVD

The "Pink Panther" cartoons have been compiled for the first time in the five-disc "Pink Panther Classic Cartoon DVD Collection," which arrived in stores Tuesday. "The Pink Panther" DVD collection includes five Peter Sellers films -- "The Pink Panther" (1964); "A Shot in the Dark" (1964), "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" (1976), "Revenge of the Pink Panther" (1978) and "Trail of the Pink Panther" (1982), plus a bonus disc. Both sets retail for around $70.