God Bless Peter Sellers…

For some unfathomable reason, I had never got into cartoons. And to be honest I didn’t like what I had seen. I can recall following a bit of Disney’s here and there and a touch of Flash Gordon. I could never bring myself to religiously read the comics like other people used to. I would rather curl up with a serialised fiction, a magazine or a children’s illustrated version of history than a comic. Perhaps,it was not normal but I found them silly and you must take my word, boring. I mean, you always knew Superman would win regardless of the situation.

The reason why I am writing all this now is because I bought the new complete Pink Panther movies DVD and on watching it immediately recalled how much I had loved those title cartoons during the teens. It seems that The Pink Panther cartoons are among the very few cartoons I really enjoyed during growing up. And even after all these years it was such a surprise to find myself chuckling and laughing at them now. I don’t know, I find the humour sort of perfect fit to my taste.

And I haven’t even mentioned my unconditional love for Peter Sellers. I still remember how rib shakingly I had enjoyed him in the Pink Panthers long back. Peter has this amazing knack of complementing his physical clumsiness with his subtly perfect dialogue delivery. Its hard to explain. He manages to portray a perfect mixture of intelligence and its lacking, in the most apt manner possible. It just feels right for me; Neither deliberately forced nor elaborately orchestrated. I may be biased but I think he is one of a kind. The DVD reminded me how much we lack such actors now. I cant see anyone from the current crop who would get away with the following lines which are funny despite being repeated so often throughout in the script.

Inspector Jacques Clouseau
Chief Inspector.
Chief Inspector Clouseau.
Yes , I know that.

Mind you I havent said anything about Dr. Strangelove with its painfully absurd comedy and that num num laugh riot called The Party.