Starring Steve Martin, Jean Reno, and Emily Mortimer. Rated PG. Opens Friday, February 6, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Steve Martin and company have finally gotten a clue—a Clouseau, I mean. Granted, his inspired mangling of the word hamburger in 2006’s The Pink Panther was idiotically funny, but otherwise the only thing memorable about that film—besides the fact that Beyoncé Knowles was, inexplicably, in it—was that Martin’s bumbling French police inspector wasn’t Peter Sellers’s bumbling French police inspector. This time around, the white-haired comedian finds his silliness footing, though he does lose his balance down a few chimneys and off one very famous balcony.

Sellers played Insp. Jacques Clouseau as a deeply serious imbecile. Martin is probably too self-aware a comedian to nail that one. Instead, squinting his button eyes and pursing his lips beneath that trademark skinny mustache, Martin’s English-garbling Clouseau is a man of equal parts ridiculous ego and perfect daftness. He’s also a man who blithely brushes off the Shroud of Turin and suggests it needs “a good dry-cleaning”.

The shroud is one of several historical artifacts that suddenly go AWOL around the globe, setting The Pink Panther 2’s paws in motion. Martin, cowriting the surprisingly tight, lightweight-witty script, obviously thought supporting star power couldn’t hurt: assisting Clouseau is an international dream team of detectives entertainingly played by Andy Garcia, Alfred Molina, Yuki Matsuzaki, and Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Jeremy Irons and France’s Elvis, Johnny Hallyday, appear as shifty-eyed types. Many of the stunts, which Martin and director Harald Zwart must have choreographed after a month of watching DVDs of Harold Lloyd, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and wild orangutans in action, are moronically funny. Insanity unfolds in an ill-fated Rome restaurant and at the Vatican. Luckily, Clouseau’s adoring secretary, Nicole (Emily Mortimer), and faithful comrade Ponton (Jean Reno) watch over him, proof that, as the inspector says, “No man is an izzland.”