Doctor Pink

The Pink Panther takes a job as a custodian at a hospital and has proved himself to be a little too helpful ambitious, taking on additional tasks such as tending to patients, waxing the floor, in additional to the regular custodial duties. This agitates his boss, the little pointy-eared man who is a hospital orderly.

There's quite a few funny moments in this cartoon short, though not one of the funniest Pink Panther cartoon I've seen. The panther seems to shed his more sly, crafty and wise self in his later cartoons, including this one.

Grade B-

As far as the 1979 Pink Panther cartoons go, Doctor Pink is not one of the worst of the batch (String Along in Pink is the weakest) but it's not one of the best either (Pink Pull is the best and most consistently funny, though Toro Pink has the best individual gag of the batch).

The theme tune, as always, is a timeless classic and still sounds great. Pinky is still well-drawn, the pink colour not jarring at all, and has some cool amusing moments, if more bumbling than usual which takes away somewhat from his likability and he is not as funny as he has proved to be before. The doctor is a good foil and is the most rootable of the two, his disdainful and dismaying facial expressions are really well done. He and Pinky work very well together.

While some are too brief and maybe there could have been slightly less, the gags are better timed and funnier than most of the 1979 batch and while not hilarious as such, they are amusing and none less than that. Coming off best was the ending, which is very funny, one of the funniest of the 1979 cartoons.

However, the animation is still not very good at all, due to the budgets being lower and the deadlines being tighter. The drawings in Doctor Pink do look very hurried-looking and are completely lacking in smoothness, while the colours lack vibrancy instead coming over as both flat and garish and the backgrounds are very scrappy and sparse in detail. All the Pink Panther cartoons adopt a minimal animation style, but a lot of the post-1975 cartoons verge on being too simplistic, the elegantly simple animation style of the early cartoons is much missed. Another major disappointment is the music outside of the theme tune, it's very stock-sounding music and it's repetitive and randomly placed, the whole cartoon sounding over-scored and in no way matching with the action. The only exception is at the end, one of the few times where that particular theme fits quite well.

Story-wise, it is very formulaic and is erratically paced in places, mostly rushed (which is preferable to dragging but it is clear that Doctor Pink like most of the later Pink Panther cartoons was made in haste.

Overall, not a bad cartoon, a decent one in fact, but not great. 6/10 Bethany Cox