DVDs – Pink Panther I & II

☻☻☻☻☺

(four smiley faces out of five)

If you’re tired of all the movies that play in your home in the daytime being animated and your child is aged 6 or older (or the age at which your child can follow the plot of a movie), you just might give the new Pink Panther movies, starring Steve Martin, a try.

Our family rented Pink Panther II on a whim a couple of months ago. The three of us, aged 6, 37 and 41, laughed ourselves silly. And to my husband and me, it was like a miracle had occurred: here was a movie that the three of us could genuinely enjoy together.

So this weekend, we sought out to rent Pink Panther I. But Hastings didn’t have Pink Panther I available to rent. What they did have was a used version for sale, and since the movies were buy-one-get-one free, we ended up purchasing both Pink Panther I and II.

After watching Pink Panther I last night and laughing a few times until we were almost on the floor, I’m thrilled that we own them both.

These movies are rated PG for suggestive humor, brief mild language and action. I personally couldn’t recall any “bad language” from either of these films, so I looked them up on a Christian movie review site and apparently the word “hell” is used twice in Pink Panther I. I couldn't find any bad language detailed for Pink Panther II. And the “suggestive humor” is so brief and so over a small kid’s head that it’s really pretty negligible. (If your kid DOES understand the “suggestive” humor, then you may have more than these movies to worry about.)

I won’t bother to summarize plots here. I mean, they’re Pink Panther movies. There’s a murder (that's not shown, of course), France’s big pink diamond is in play, it’s all a big mystery, Inspector Clouseau is a complete bumbling idiot with a hilariously ridiculous French accent, yadda, yadda, yadda. The humor is downright slapstick and goofball, but not so crude as to be inappropriate for children. There is a fart joke in Pink Panther I, but … well … it made me laugh.

Before you go out and purchase one or both of these movies, you should of course give them a test run by renting them or checking them out from your library, but I would definitely recommend them for a night of popcorn munching, jammy wearing, family fun.