Bumbling Cops

My Cousin Vinny

When two Italian-American boys from New York are falsely accused of murder in a small Alabama town, they call for a lawyer--but the only lawyer they know is their cousin Vinny (Joe Pesci), who made six attempts before he passed his bar exam. My Cousin Vinny is a classic fish-out-of-water comedy; the flimsy plot about clearing the two boys and solving the murder is just a hook to support a lot of culture-clash humor. Thanks to the strong cast of character actors like Fred Gwynne, Austin Pendleton, and Lane Smith, it's pretty funny--even old-hat jokes about Brooklyn versus Southern accents come to life. Pesci has played a few too many schticky characters, but this time it works. There's just enough humanity in his caricature to make Vinny likable and entertaining. When the movie was released, there was controversy about whether Marisa Tomei, playing Vinny's big-haired and black-leather-wearing fiancée, deserved to win the best supporting actress Oscar (she beat out Judy Davis, Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, and Vanessa Redgrave); but seeing her performance on its own, it's a comic marvel and worthy of honor. --Bret Fetzer

A college student and his friend are accused of murder in the depths of the South, and law school graduate cousin Vinny comes to the rescue. The trouble is, Vinny passed the bar on his sixth try and has never appeared in court before.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-FEB-2003
Media Type: DVD

Super Troopers

The fine art of handing out a freeway speeding ticket gets a deviously funny twist in this smart-alecky farce written and performed by the comedy troop Broken Lizard (consisting of Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske). These pranksters in patrol cars (led by their long-suffering commander Brian Cox) are little more than overgrown frat boys in a campus rivalry with the brawling Vermont bullies of the local police force, and they know how to have fun on the highway patrol. This skit-like collection of comic moments clumps from one scene to another like a variety show, but the gags are more hit than miss, thanks largely to terrific ensemble work and inspired motorist mind games. With a nod to such 1970s comedies as Animal House and Caddyshack, this "boys in blue just wanna have fun" farce is hardly sophisticated, just clever, raucous fun. --Sean Axmaker

Always looking for action, five over-enthusiastic, but under-stimulated Vermont State Troopers raise hell on the highway, keeping motorists anxiously looking in their rear view mirrors. Between an ongoing feud with the local cops over whose you-know-what is bigger and the state government wanting to shut them down, the Super Troopers find themselves patrolling the boundaries of good taste as they hilariously and unwittingly skid towards solving the crime of their lives.

Return of the Pink Panther

Peter Sellers's third go-around as the prideful but bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau is funny enough, but this 1975 Blake Edwards revival of the Sellers-Clouseau connection is a little weak in comparison to predecessors The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark (both made in 1964). Costar Christopher Plummer actually gets some of the most interesting screen time as a retired cat burglar whom Clouseau accuses of getting back into the business. (If it sounds like there might be a To Catch a Thief vibe mixed in here, you're right.) Herbert Lom is hilarious as Clouseau's psychologically eroding boss, and Clouseau's ritualistic collisions with valet Cato (Burt Kwouk) are great examples of Edwards's delicious comic timing. --Tom Keogh

Inspector Clouseau is once again chasing the Phantom believing he has stolen the Pink Panther diamond.
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: SELLERS,PETER
Title: RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER
Street Release Date: 01/10/2006
Domestic
Genre: COMEDY VIDEO

Hoodwinked (Widescreen Edition)

Hoodwinked fuses the classic fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood with the crisscrossing storylines of film noir--pretty ambitious stuff for a computer-animated cartoon. The police cordon off Grandma's cottage and an amphibious version of William Powell named Nicky Flippers (voiced by David Ogden Stiers, M*A*S*H) begins interrogating the suspects: A Little Red in bell-bottoms (Anne Hathaway, Ella Enchanted), a Wolf turned investigative journalist (Patrick Warburton, The Woman Chaser), a snow-boarding Granny (Glenn Close, 101 Dalmatians), and a dimwitted would-be Woodsman (Jim Belushi, Curly Sue), each of whom have very different reasons for ending up in that cottage living room. The visual style of Hoodwinked mixes a clunky, video-game look with an homage to the stop-motion puppetry of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other Rankin-Bass holiday specials. While sometimes awkward, there are also moments of surreal beauty, such as when a depressed Red wanders through a field of blue and red flowers--and moments of lunatic comedy, such as the Schnitzel song, which is irresistibly bizarre. The Shrek-style pop-culture references grow annoying, but the left-field goofiness of a yodeling goat points toward a far more distinct and delightful comic world. Also featuring the voices of Anthony Anderson (Kangaroo Jack), rapper Xzibit, and an especially witty turn by Andy Dick (NewsRadio) as a deceptively cute bunny rabbit. --Bret Fetzer

A new spin on an old fable. In this film Red Granny The Big Bad Wolf and the Woodman all face Detective Flippers as he attempts to determine the 'real' events of the Little Red Riding Hood story. Original songs and witty humor fill this fun and adventurous film.System Requirements:Running Time: 80 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY Rating: PG UPC: 796019791090 Manufacturer No: 79109

A Shot in the Dark

Accident prone Inspector Clouseau attempts to prove the innocence of a maid suspected of killing her lover.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG
Release Date: 31-JAN-2006
Media Type: DVD

Blake Edwards's Inspector Clouseau films really took their complete shape with this second movie in the series, which features star Peter Sellers really tweaking that French accent and key supporting players Herbert Lom, Burt Kwouk, and André Maranne (all getting on board for the first time). The story finds Sellers refusing to believe in the guilt of a beautiful woman (Elke Sommer) accused of murder, and there are a number of hilarious sequences, including one in which Clouseau goes "undercover" at a nudist colony. Arguably the best of the films, A Shot in the Dark definitely finds Edwards honing a seamless blend of slapstick, brilliant timing, verbal wit, a great cast, and Sellers's brilliance into a unique experience. --Tom Keogh

Without a Clue

Suppose for a moment that Dr. Watson was the real brains behind Sherlock Holmes? The result is anything but elementary! Academy Award® winners* Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley deliver stellar performances as a delightful duo an 1890s Odd Couple (Los Angeles Times) in this madcap mystery that s the most hilarious Sherlock Holmes adventure of them all ( Sneak Previews )! Dr. John Watson (Kingsley) is secretly a crime-solving genius. But to protect his reputation as a physician he hires bumbling boozy out-of-work actor Reginald Kincaid (Caine) to play the part of his fictional creation Sherlock Holmes. The charade works until Watson mysteriously disappears forcing the baffled seriously inept Holmes to crack the biggest case of Watson s career on his own!System Requirements: Running Time 107 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG UPC: 027616902962 Manufacturer No: 1006073

Without a Clue is an underrated comedy featuring stellar teamwork by two great actors, Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. This Sherlock Holmes pastiche with a twist stars Kingsley as physician, writer, and self-effacing super-sleuth Dr. John Watson, who channels his genius for deduction into lucrative stories about Holmes. Watson wants the world to believe the fictional private eye actually exists, posing a problem when a steady stream of troubled souls come seeking Holmes's help. The doctor's prescription: hire a two-bit, drunken, skirt-chasing actor (Caine) to portray the Great Detective, an arrangement that causes Watson consternation whenever "Holmes" tries to improvise his way through a case. Wonderful comic timing and tension make Without a Clue a delight; Caine, particularly, gets a lot of mileage out of the faux Holmes's grand efforts to appear a genius. Henry Mancini's score adds a touch of old Hollywood gloss, and Thom Eberhardt (Night of the Comet) directs. --Tom Keogh

Hoodwinked (Full Screen Version)

A new spin on an old fable. In this film Red Granny The Big Bad Wolf and the Woodman all face Detective Flippers as he attempts to determine the 'real' events of the Little Red Riding Hood story. Original songs and witty humor fill this fun and adventurous film.System Requirements:Running Time: 80 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY Rating: PG UPC: 796019791199 Manufacturer No: 79119

Hoodwinked fuses the classic fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood with the crisscrossing storylines of film noir--pretty ambitious stuff for a computer-animated cartoon. The police cordon off Grandma's cottage and an amphibious version of William Powell named Nicky Flippers (voiced by David Ogden Stiers, M*A*S*H) begins interrogating the suspects: A Little Red in bell-bottoms (Anne Hathaway, Ella Enchanted), a Wolf turned investigative journalist (Patrick Warburton, The Woman Chaser), a snow-boarding Granny (Glenn Close, 101 Dalmatians), and a dimwitted would-be Woodsman (Jim Belushi, Curly Sue), each of whom have very different reasons for ending up in that cottage living room. The visual style of Hoodwinked mixes a clunky, video-game look with an homage to the stop-motion puppetry of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other Rankin-Bass holiday specials. While sometimes awkward, there are also moments of surreal beauty, such as when a depressed Red wanders through a field of blue and red flowers--and moments of lunatic comedy, such as the Schnitzel song, which is irresistibly bizarre. The Shrek-style pop-culture references grow annoying, but the left-field goofiness of a yodeling goat points toward a far more distinct and delightful comic world. Also featuring the voices of Anthony Anderson (Kangaroo Jack), rapper Xzibit, and an especially witty turn by Andy Dick (NewsRadio) as a deceptively cute bunny rabbit. --Bret Fetzer

The Pink Panther

Inspector Clouseau of the Paris police, attempts to catch a jewel thief, unaware that his wife is having an affair with the thief.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 31-JAN-2006
Media Type: DVD

The history of film comedy would have been much altered if Peter Ustinov had stayed in the role of Jacques Clouseau, the bumbling French police inspector in The Pink Panther. But Ustinov dropped out, the role went to Peter Sellers, and a classic character was born: suspicious, blundering, with a pompous little mustache and a sometimes impenetrable accent, Clouseau was always one step behind everybody else in the room. The Pink Panther introduced Clouseau hot on the trail of a famous jewel thief (David Niven), who may be planning to make off with an expensive gem known as the Pink Panther. Set in a European ski resort, this bubbly comedy is a wonderful dose of '60s style, from the famous Henry Mancini theme music to the presence of two of Europe's top sex symbols of the era, Claudia Cardinale and Capucine. The film also introduced the popular cartoon Pink Panther, slinking around to Mancini's music in an animated credits sequence. The film's success brought a follow-up, A Shot in the Dark, also released in 1964; after 11 years, Sellers and top comedy director Blake Edwards (10) returned with three more sequels. --Robert Horton

The Pink Panther Strikes Again

The fourth Pink Panther film with Peter Sellers and directed by Blake Edwards is easily the most over-the-top, but it's still pretty entertaining. The story finds Clouseau's former boss (Herbert Lom) totally insane after years of enduring the bumbling detective, and sequestered in a castle with a death-ray gun. Clouseau has to stop him from using the weapon on the world, and his efforts to do so make for some choice, Edwards-style slapstick. The quotient of destruction (a Clouseau staple) is higher than average, but there is also real wit--particularly in a final scene where Lom re-creates his most famous role as the monster from the 1962 Phantom of the Opera. --Tom Keogh

The fourth Pink Panther film with Peter Sellers and directed by Blake Edwards is easily the most over-the-top but it's still pretty entertaining. The story finds Clouseau's former boss (Herbert Lom) totally insane after years of enduring the bumbling detective and sequestered in a castle with a death-ray gun. Clouseau has to stop him from using the weapon on the world and his efforts to do so make for some choice Edwards-style slapstick. The quotient of destruction (a Clouseau staple) is higher than average but there is also real wit--particularly in a final scene where Lom re-creates his most famous role as the monster from the 1962 Phantom of the Opera. --Tom KeoghSystem Requirements:Running Time: 111 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 027616905932 Manufacturer No: 1006392

Moving Violations

Their licenses suspended, their vehicles impounded, a hapless band of misfits, malcontents and dreamers meet in traffic school. As it turns out, this isn't your ordinary run of the mill traffic school. The crew find themselves in the clutches of two over zealous police officers lead by the Judge to running the school so that the students are forever without licenses and cars. What ensues is a side splitting, tire screeching battle of wits. Who will be king of the road?