...of the comedic talents of Alan Arkin.
Arkin is a fine actor, with a flair for incorporating pathos into comedy. Arkin's Clouseau was different from the one that Sellers had portrayed (though the Clouseau in The Pink Panther & A Shot In The Dark was far removed from the Clouseau in the 70's movies) - Arkin's Clouseau KNEW that he was hopelessly clumsy and introduced a side to the character that Sellers steered clear of when the three picture deal was stuck during the 1970's.
Inspector Clouseau is also one of the shortest entries in the series; this would most likely be down to the fact that it seems choppy, with all the hallmarks of a movie being butchered down to around 90 minutes when a studio loses faith during post-production and test screenings.
Even if a restored version was released (though it's a pretty safe bet that the original elements ceased to exist decades ago), it would be a far from perfect movie, but it would at least give fans of the series a chance to properly evaluate the movie as a whole, rather than as just a series of disjointed set-pieces where characters appear and disappear and situations occur with little-or-no-reason.
Alan Arkin may have been mauled for his interesting interpretation of the character, but there was more inventiveness and creativity into his single stint as Clousea than Sellers put into the three seventies Pink Panther movies.
