The Pink Phink (1964)

Starring: The Pink Panther
Grade: A

When the painter chases the Pink Panther around that huge column and they both paint as they run in circles, the painter should have given that column a second look. The pink and blue candy stripe look it turned into was kind of cool.

Summary

The Pink Panther walks through the hallway of some random building and finds a painter (known as “The Little Man” or “Big Nose” within the Pink Panther franchise) who is painting the colorless wall blue. Curious, Pink Panther dips his finger in the paint bucket to taste it for some reason and is disgusted. Well, it is paint after all. Anyway, he takes the blue paint bucket away without the painter knowing, and he replaces it with a new paint bucket consisting of pink paint. Without missing a beat, the painter dips his paintbrush in the paint bucket and continues to paint the wall, only to quickly realize that it’s now the wrong color. The painter looks around confused but finds blue footprints on the ground and follows them to a door. The door is locked, but he tries to open it. Looking through the keyhole, blue paint is splashed around his eye. Now, he’s mad. The painter moves back a few steps and then rushes to break down the door, but he stops once it’s opened. The painter looks down to see the blue paint bucket in the doorway. He doesn’t question it. He just grabs it and turns around. As soon as he does, Pink Panther walks through with his pink paint bucket and pushes the door open hard enough to slam the painter against the wall. It splatters paint all over the painter, the wall, and the door. The painter falls flat on the ground, and a clear silhouette of his body is seen on the wall in a perfect outline because it wasn’t touched by the paint since his body was against it. Next, the painter continues to paint a new wall of the building blue, but Pink Panther paints the part of the wall the painter hasn’t gone over yet in a 30/70 split. Once the painter reaches the doorway, he sees the gigantic pink streak below the mostly blue wall and paints blue over it. As he does this, Pink Panther paints pink over the large part of the wall to ensure this poor bastard can’t get his job done no matter how hard he tries.

Naturally, the frustrations for the painter will continue because Pink Panther has made it his mission to make sure everything is turned pink, and when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING.

My Thoughts:

Leaving the animated intro sequences of The Pink Panther films behind him, the iconic cartoon character finally gets a chance to stretch his wings to star in his first ever animated short. With this, the toon world rejoiced. The potential was always there, as the design and undeniable coolness of the character caught everyone’s eye way before Peter Sellers would come onscreen to deliver some of the best comedic performances of his era as Inspector Clouseau right after. Thankfully, Friz Freleng, Hawley Pratt, and Blake Edwards realized the potential for their own Bugs Bunny-like star and went all in with The Pink Phink. Just like that, they won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short, and they were off and running into making the Pink Panther into a multimedia franchise. The Pink Phink may not look Oscar-worthy at first glance, but they didn’t get much competition in that category in 1964. Even so, a lot of credit needs to be given to how well this story is told and how entertaining it’s six-minute runtime is without any dialogue. With just Henry Mancini’s legendary theme song (a timeless theme that is virtually impossible to get sick of) playing out over the short, the Pink Panther’s star quality is seen immediately upon his entrance. It’s just him and the Little Man, and nothing else is needed to make this a great story.

When I say nothing else is needed, this cannot be stressed enough. A major aspect of The Pink Phink that makes it as endearing as it is, is its pencil-thin focus on the two characters and the bit of each short scene they share together. You are led to believe that the animators didn’t care to work on anything else. Before the extravagant, pink-filled ending that makes the audience realize its style was all by design, everything has this transparent, “unfinished” look in everything that isn’t on the three main components of the scene. Each area of the building they are in is only drawn halfway, and they don’t bother to use any color in their surroundings other than the blue and pink paint used by the characters. As the story takes shape though, you start to notice how it’s used to emphasize the importance of both colors to the short and the stark contrast between the two, along with making our star stand out in a very special way. There’s one scene where the painter chases Pink Panther with a shotgun and nothing else is defined or completed other than the blue walkway they are running on and the door they’re trying to exit out of. When the painter paints the staircase blue in a look that is a little Truman Show-like, and the Pink Panther opens the door to dump pink paint over the steps to cover them completely and perfectly, there is nothing else surrounding them in the most minimalist way possible. Naturally, I just thought it was the animators finding the cheapest avenue possible to put this short together, impressing me even more since I still found myself fully attentive for the entirety of it. However, the ending reveals how it’s all setup this way to maximize the reaction from the viewer to the all-pink finale (which would be nightmarish in a live-action short; our minds are put at ease once the sunset shows a bit of a blue sky before the credits though) that leaves the painter bashing his head off of Pink Panther’s new mailbox in frustration. With these two halves making the whole of The Pink Phink, it really shows how well you can tell a story with the bare minimum and still make it worthwhile.

For the record, it is possible that this story was created in this manner because of its limited budget, but that doesn’t take away from the short at all. Don’t get it twisted. If anything, it just shows the creativity of the minds behind the production when their backs were against the wall, and that only makes me appreciate it even more.

I like the ridiculousness of the Pink Panther pouring paint into the painter’s gun and how it leads to the painter firing paint blots all over the house to accidentally turn the whole house pink in the cat’s favor (with Pink Panther comically giving him the “O-K” gesture when he finishes the job on the roof after he points out “You missed a spot” without saying it), but the painter somehow thinking in his head that the gigantic footprints on the ground are that of a mouse was slightly outrageous. With that being said, the painter seeing the silhouette of the panther against the wall he just painted and him thinking that this is the outline of a giant mouse was kind of funny, despite being completely illogical. This giant nosed human is clearly a fucking dunce. I guess it makes sense why he’s a painter and not an accountant or something. At least he gets a little bit of revenge after FINALLY noticing the large panther carrying a paint bucket in the house by shooting his tail with a shotgun. Let’s be honest, he really needed that for confidence reasons. Nevertheless, I liked this whole short being about color and paint because every little gag they do, like where the painter and the Pink Panther paint over halves of a door or Pink Panther turns on a paint sprinkler that sprays pink all over a room, is extremely satisfying from a visual standpoint.

The little giggle led out by the Pink Panther when he’s hidden against the pink wall (where just his eyes are seen before he closes them too) and the painter rubs his finger on it to test the wet paint was unexpected but very welcomed. With this being the only real audible noise outside of the theme song, it added just enough to our star to understand his personality. He’s not necessarily cocky or a shit-disturber in the Looney Tunes sense. He’s more of a happy-go-lucky type of jungle cat who, though he is disrupting the painter’s job for no reason, isn’t trying to be a “stinker” that lives to annoy. He’s just having a little fun and kind of stumbles upon his dream home after doing so. He even thanks the unwitting painter with a kiss after the job is completed.

Despite this innocent potato of a man suffering from an outright meltdown by the end of this short, concluding with even himself being painted pink, The Pink Phink is an excellent animated short and is a fantastic example in how to introduce a new cartoon star to the mix at a time when competition was still heavy. At the same time, it showed how the Pink Panther is different and how well he can interact with his surroundings in the most simplistic plots imaginable WHILE still being entertaining. Once this short released, it must have been an easy sell for the studios to produce more because you don’t have to do too much to make the pink cat’s adventures worth watching. With the right animators and storytellers behind it, the mileage you can get out of a relatively silent character like this is second to none. Because of this, we have a lot to be thankful for with The Pink Phink.