The Pink Phink
The Pink Phink
| 18 December 1964 (USA)
The Pink Phink Trailers

A house painter can't understand why everything he paints blue turns pink.

Reviews
Karry Best movie of this year hands down!
BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment
Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?
Protraph Lack of good storyline.
TheOneManBoxOffice With the success of Blake Edwards' 1963 comedy caper film "The Pink Panther" starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, and Claudia Cardinale, the iconic cat that we see in the opening credits, created by Friz Freling and David H. DePatie, would be spun off into a series of shorts released under United Artists, further cementing the character into pop culture for years to come. The first one of these shorts, and arguably one of the best of the bunch is "The Pink Phink", directed by Freling and released one year after the release of the original feature he made his debut on.The plot goes like this: The Pink Panther, the silent cool cat himself, disagrees with the decorator's choice of color for a house, which happens to be blue. The panther then decides to make the changes himself by painting the house pink, much to the dismay of the decorator, would eventually be known as "The Little Man" and later as "Big Nose".For an animated short, it's a simple premise, but really, a simple premise is all it needs, because the short itself is simple in and of itself. The animation, while not as minimalistic as a UPA cartoon, is pretty minimal, and understandably so, because the budgets for animated shorts at the time were at an all-time low. Some would even outsource their animation out of the states. However, like a lot of animators and directors in Hollywood at the time, they were still able to adapt to the budget cuts and still make an entertaining short on par with a lot of the classics that came before it. In fact, "The Pink Phink" won the Oscar for Best Cartoon Short Subject, meaning it doesn't have to be the animated equivalent of the Mona Lisa to be good. Not only is it simple, but it's also rather funny.The film would be followed by many other shorts starring The Pink Panther, which would later lead to spin off series that would be associated with the character, such as "The Inspector" and "The Ant and the Aardvark". Overall, "The Pink Phink" is definitely worth a look if you're a fan of Blake Edwards' "Pink Panther" movies and animation in general.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) There is certainly some irony to it that it needed an MGM movie to get Warner Bros cartoon filmmaking legend Friz Freleng his first and only Oscar. This 6.5-minute film was made 50 years ago and stars the Pink Panther and a little man who wants to paint everything blue. However, in the end, everything is pink and this does not only include the walls of the house, but the entire world including the human character. So yeah, some smart ideas included in here. I especially liked the one where they simultaneously painted the top/bottom of the wall blue/pink. A good watch, but no material here for anything over 7 minutes. Still some laughs and as always there is no dialog in here, but we hear the Pink Panther theme for the entire film. The animation is fairly simple, so this one relies more on wit in terms of story. And as a whole I think it delivers in this area. Recommended.
Shawn Watson The Pink Panther is cool as cool can be. And so funny and cute. In this cartoon he observes some little dude painting a house blue. Preferring Pink to Blue he goes about sabotaging the painter's work. Every where the painter paints in blue, the Panther paints in Pink. Sounds simple and not funny, but it's hilarious. The Pink Panther cannot be outsmarted, he's just always way ahead of the game and in the end he inevitably wins and claims the now pink house for himself.And why not? Though only 40 years old and not really as well established as the Looney Tunes cartoons The Pink Panther is surely one of THE classic animated characters.
Robert Reynolds This Academy Award-winning short was the first Pink Panther theatrical release (at least as a short subject) and is a winner on all counts. Hilarious, well animated, marvelous story and use of music-everything is wonderful. There wee other very good shorts in the series, but none of them even came close to equaling this first one. I've always felt sorry for the poor little guy in this cartoon! Most highly recommended.