Cut 45 minutes of filler material and this would make a nice little hour-long network retrospective and a decent tribute to Peter Sellers. It mostly plays that way anyway, with a "plot" which is simply dropped halfway through, serving only as one of the framing devices to introduce the Sellers clips. The other framing device, a reporter's series of interviews with Clouseau's associates, is so inanely written and obviously "tribute-y" that it's shocking to remember that this was a theatrical feature film.
And that was Blake Edwards' major mistake. Some of the unused footage is amusing, but if it had been up to Sellers' usual hilarious standard, it wouldn't have gone unused. And the flashback sequences are made up of, well, flashbacks--scenes which we already saw in the previous movies. On a TV special, that would have been fine. Here, it just makes you wonder what Edwards could have been thinking.
And that was Blake Edwards' major mistake. Some of the unused footage is amusing, but if it had been up to Sellers' usual hilarious standard, it wouldn't have gone unused. And the flashback sequences are made up of, well, flashbacks--scenes which we already saw in the previous movies. On a TV special, that would have been fine. Here, it just makes you wonder what Edwards could have been thinking.