Hm. Just watched Revenge of the Pink Panther, it was a tremendous step down from the previous movie. For some reason they decided to make Clouseau terribly racist, which l don't recall ever being the case in the previous movies. Like, l always saw Cato as just another eccentric charactes, who just happens to be Asian, and l don't recall Clouseau ever treating him differently because of that. Meanwhile here he's constantly insalting him, "you yellow swine" "his fiendish yellow brain" etc, not to mention Cato is also given more screentime than usual and its spent treating him as more clumsy and dumb than Clouseau. And then theres the Hong Kong disguise...
Maybe Cato was always a problematic character, or always treated poorly, and l just never realized it, but regardless it's right at the forefront here.
I was amazed when Strikes Again featured gay jokes, a gay club, and a character in drag all without being offensive. Then you have the next movie in which another subject that could easily be handled poorly is... Handled poorly.
But even without any of that, Revenge also just generally has less funny jokes, and a lazy plot. Why are they so quick to hire Dreyfus back after he became a Bond villain in the last one? Also didn't he die at the end, or do l remember wrong? That's not even the lazy writing that l meant, it was just a separate thought, but it's totally an example of that too.
Also, l was reading that apparently there was a rejected 3 hour cut of Strikes Again, and l'd totally kill for that. Some of it made it into Trail, and l wonder if anyone has looked into editing it back in.