The Pink Panther (2006)

I always enjoy watching Pink Panther cartoons but didn’t know they made a movie inspired by it. The other day my friend Dr.Satheesh mentioned about this movie “The Pink Panther (2006)” and how hilarious it was. Since I had iTunes installed on my machine (as I have an iPhone) I thought I should check out the famous iStore experience and buy the movie through it. Unfortunately, my Apple account (since I have an India SIM for iPhone) didn’t show me any movies. It seems there are very little items to buy in terms of music, movies, TV shows for rest of USA. So I used my US Credit Card and created a new account. Unlike Hulu.com and Amazon VOD services which restrict any activity for outside USA IP addresses, Apple allows you to purchase from iStore if you have a USA credit card and billing address. iStore presented two options – either to purchase the movie at $9.99 (too expensive considering I can buy the legal VCD/DVD in India for nearly half of that price) or rent it for $2.99. I selected to rent it. And I should say the whole experience was fabulous, any novice computer user can do it easily. After the purchased movie downloaded (nearly 1GB in high quality) seamlessly. The quality of the movie playback was great.

The iSstore rental has a limitation, the movie is available for 30 days from purchase and from the time you start playing it first you only have 24 hours (this could have been improved by increasing to 2 or 3 days). About the movie itself, it was hilarious, a great comedy and a must watch. Steve Martin has done a fine job – his body language, dialogue delivery, especially where he learns to pronounce “hamburger” was brilliant.