Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" said of the Pink Panther films "I'm not sure why Mr. Sellers and Mr. Lom are such a hilarious team, though it may be because each is a fine comic actor with a special talent for portraying the sort of all-consuming, epic self-absorption that makes slapstick farce initially acceptable—instead of alarming—and finally so funny." The film critic Elvis Mitchell said that Sellers was one of the few comic geniuses who was able to truly hide behind his characters, giving the audience no sense of what he was really like in real life. A feature of the characterisations undertaken by Sellers is that, regardless of how clumsy or idiotic they are, he ensured that they always retain their dignity. On his playing of Clouseau, Sellers said: "I set out to play Clouseau with great dignity because I feel that he thinks he is probably one of the greatest detectives in the world. The original script makes him out to be a complete idiot. I thought a forgivable vanity would humanise him and make him kind of touching."