Eddie Murphy and the Case of the Franchise on Life Support

If one were to list humanity’s noblest achievements, somewhere between the invention of penicillin and the sandwich, one might once have found The Pink Panther — a suave, bumbling cat-and-mouse affair that tickled the mind without requiring the brain to work overtime. Now, however, in a move of such audacious absurdity that it could only have been conceived in the mind of a Hollywood executive who mistakes champagne for brain fluid, Eddie Murphy has been announced as the next Pink Panther.

Murphy, a man who in the 1980s could summon comedy gold from thin air, now faces the task of breathing life into a franchise that has been embalmed more times than a pharaoh’s aunt. It’s not that Murphy lacks talent — rather, it’s that Hollywood will almost certainly hand him a script with all the wit of a deflated soufflé and the subtlety of a marching band in a monastery.

The result will doubtless be pink, panther-shaped, and yet as graceful as a walrus in tap shoes.

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