Steve Martin returns as the disaster-prone Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther 2.

Columbia / Sony Pictures / Peter Iovino

Steve Martin returns as the bumbling, disaster-prone Inspector Clouseau in the riotous The Pink Panther 2 (MGM, $29.98), leaving mayhem in his wake as he is recruited to join an international team of detectives to find the thief known as “The Tornado” who has made off with the world’s treasures, including the Shroud of Turin, the Japanese emperor’s sword and the fabulous Pink Panther diamond.

Along the way there’s plenty of slapstick for Clouseau to get into, including a frightening encounter with a very tall wine cabinet at a posh restaurant and an interrogation of the Pope in Vatican City which leads to pandemonium in St. Peter’s Square. (Amazingly, most of the film was shot on locations in Boston and in a nearby warehouse in Chelsea, with only a week in Paris for outdoor location shots.)

The film succeeds because Martin believes in Clouseau and his certainty that he always knows what he’s doing, even when things are going haywire. His awkward attempts to win the heart of Nicole, his boss’s sweet secretary, are played charmingly. He also has a rollicking exchange with Lily Tomlin as a woman who is brought in to cure Clouseau of his chauvinism and misguidedly bigoted remarks. Happily, this Panther is still in the pink.

A deadly waltz

Don’t be fooled by the bright title, Waltz With Bashir (Sony, $28.96) nor that this Israeli film is animated, the first animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award, in fact. Director Ari Folman’s film is a grim and often violent tale that begins with a man’s nightmares about a military operation he took part in two decades earlier to root out Palestinian terrorists during Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon. The film opens with a scary scene of angry dogs running across a city, finally stopping at the home of the terrified man to howl below his window. The man recounts his nightmare to a filmmaker friend, who is actually Folman himself. The man believes his nightmare may have something to do with his assignment during the invasion to shoot the dogs whose barking alerted the suspects.

The man’s story spurs Folman, who also was part of the Israeli invasion, to examine his own feelings about the operation, looking up old friends and comrades who served with him, hoping they might shed light on the massacres that occurred at two refugee camps during the war. They stir up often harrowing memories in Folman which are depicted in a bold style that resembles pages from a graphic comic.

Waltz With Bashir is unusual — a cartoon used as political statement with an exploration of the horrors of war, the effects it has on survivors and the repression of memory.

A fantasy jumble

Flying monkeys, a minotaur, a giant fire monster, a precocious weasel, a hero from The Arabian Nights, Academy Award-winning actress Helen Mirren riding a unicorn, the tornado from The Wizard of Oz, and Toto too. These are a few of the wacky elements that are jumbled together in the fantasy Inkheart (Warner, $28.98).

The plot revolves around Brendan Fraser’s character, Moritmer Folchart, who is desperately searching for a rare copy of the out-of-print book: Inkheart. It seems that while reading the book aloud to his daughter 12 years earlier, Mortimer brought some of the book’s characters to life in the real world where they are stuck because shortly after the incident, Mortimer lost the book. Worse, at the same time he accidentally sent his wife into the pages of Inkheart where she is now trapped as a kitchen maid, but unable to speak because she is not one of the book’s original characters.

Inkheart, the movie, is supposed to be a piece of whimsical wonderment, such as when a passage about treasure is read aloud from The Arabian Nights, sand floods across the floor while gold coins fall from the ceiling. But the film’s complex plot might leave children, at whom the film is aimed, wondering what the heck is going on.

Also this week

A broke woman takes a job at a struggling financial magazine and her own financial struggles prove to be what the public is looking for in the romantic comedy Confessions of a Shopaholic (Touchstone, $29.99); a jilted guy takes in “the perfect couple” as new roommates but then worries that they are getting too involved in his life in Table for Three (Anchor Bay, $26.97); a hard-drinking cad struggles to turn his life around and find love in the comedy Bob Funk (Magnolia, $26.98); a schoolgirl’s bizarre behavior worries both her mother and her teacher in Phoebe in Wonderland (Image, $27.98); a star-crossed night in 1967 in London is recalled fondly as members of the band The Turtles meet all their favorite musical stars in My Dinner With Jimi (Infinity, $14.98); a virus turns humans into werewolves in War Wolves (Monarch, $24.95); a middle-aged woman living in a house in Brazil with two teenage sons and a cheating husband looks for relief in Alice’s House (Indiepix, $24.95); four families get caught up in illegal gun trafficking in Guns (Phase 4, $29.99).

From TV

Back for another round on your home screen are: The Girls Next Door — Season Five (Fox, $29.98); Reba: The Complete Sixth Season (Fox, $24.98).

For children

Keep them entranced with the animated Dragon Hungers (Phase 4, $14.99); Tom and Jerry: Chuck Jones Collection (Warner, $26.99).

Classics

Appeal to your better half with filmmaker Alain Resnais’ mysteriously twisty Last Year at Marienbad or with Louis Malle’s far more accessible My Dinner with André, both from Criterion for $39.95 each.

Essentially a two-man conversation between playwright Wallace Shawn and innovative stage director Andre Gregory at a Manhattan restaurant, My Dinner with Andre is a sparkling, witty and provocative two-hour trip through philosophy and art and the meaning of life while never leaving the table.

Andre — a world traveler — enthusiastically tells the skeptical Wally (Shawn) of his many adventures in the forests of Poland, the Sahara, the heaths of Scotland, the mountains of India and even to the estate of famed photographer Richard Avedon on Long Island. The director also expounds on his experiments in the theater. It may sound a bit pretentious and Andre self-absorbed, but as the somewhat curmudgeonly and judgmental Wally probes, a dialogue about approaching life between the two develops.

Written by Shawn and Gregory, what My Dinner With André is about in many ways is being there in the moment. Malle asks his audience to be present for the conversation rather than be swept along with the action as we do at the movies. It’s like you’re at the table during dinner with Andre — only you don’t get any dialogue.

The newly remastered DVD includes new interviews with Gregory and Shawn by filmmaker Noah Baumbach, an interview Shawn did with Malle and a scholarly essay on the film.

With Journal Wire Reports

mjanuson@projo.com