Vacation: 10 Ill-Advised Comedy Movie Comebacks
3. The Pink Panther
With the prize turkey of Sgt. Bilko stinking up his CV, you'd've thought Steve Martin would have given properties associated with another actor a wide berth. Sadly he didn't and distinct spinning noises were heard emanating from Peter Sellers' grave when The Pink Panther franchise returned in 2006.
Other players had taken on the role of walking disaster area Inspector Clouseau, from Alan Arkin to Roger Moore, but Sellers made that insane Frenchman his own. Martin is as good a performer as his forebear in many ways, and if he'd done this movie differently he may well have gotten away with it, even as the voice of reason was bellowing at him to stop.
The reboot led to two films, but the star went for some bizarre choices. The white hair + black moustache combination. The accent that was about as funny as garlic breath. Not to mention the downright baffling sequence where Clouseau was tied to a pole in the rain for no apparent reason whilst shouting "I would like to buy a hamburger!" Sellers' reputation as a master surrealist remained utterly untouched.