For every moviegoer, there are certain things that guarantee they will go see a movie, no matter how much of a bomb it looks like. Even though the movie “RV” looks like one big trailer potty joke from start to finish, I’d watch Robin Williams re-grout tile for two hours — he’s just that good. “The Pink Panther,” likewise, might as well be 93 minutes of Steve Martin, as Inspector Jacques Clouseau, with a meringue-in-the-face caricature of a French accent, but it’s worth it because it’s Steve Martin and he’s hilarious.

The movie seems to be aware of the boon of having him as well. The plot hurls by in a clunky whirl of an exposition wherein a soccer coach is murdered and “The Pink Panther,” his pink diamond ring (so gaudy even Britney Spears would be like, “Come on, y’all, this is a bit too much,”) has disappeared. By the end of the film, the bumbling detective will have cracked the case, but more interestingly, he will have strolled through airport security without having to remove shoes, trenchcoat, jacket, belt and beret. (But who cares? Get a load of that eensey-weensey little European car he’s driving!)

Beyoncé Knowles stars as the girlfriend of the dead coach for no other reason than to provide the hotness counterpoint for Clouseau’s outrageous high-water pants. She, like just about everyone and everything in this

movie, serves as a jumping off point for some kind of throwaway joke. Even Kevin Kline, as Clouseau’s nemesis, is forgettable. As a rule, you’ll find more structure in an episode of the improvisational comedy show “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” than in the slapstick “Panther.”

For instance, Clouseau’s assistant, for no reason whatsoever, walks into his kitchen and asks if she can have a hardboiled egg, point A. Point B is a bicyclist down on the street crashing into a tent and exploding. See if you can connect the two.

Try this one — Clouseau orders one of those pretentious mixed drinks that get set on fire. These are usually immediately extinguished. For some reason, his is not. Can you guess what’s going to happen?

Martin’s comedy shines not only on the screen but in his role as a writer. His first book, 1979’s “Cruel Shoes,” was back-pocket thin and contained 45 stories. The hilarious title story took up a mere 274 words. Were this movie, however, spawned from a “Saturday Night Live” skit, Martin, an SNL veteran, would have been forced to dwell on a joke about flatulence inside a soundproof booth for the better part of the movie.

Luckily, Martin’s energy is ultimately what carries the movie along at such a brisk, giggling clip. Watching the bumbling Frenchman interrogate a prisoner as both the “good cop” and the “bad cop,” it’s clear that Martin is having as much fun as he did years ago in his film noir satire “Dead Mean Don’t Wear Plaid.” Martin has always known that while the pen is mightier than the sword, a sword is a good thing to keep on hand to cull the weak jokes from the herd — or at least keep them mercifully short.

Ashley O’Dell writes about movies that aren’t in the theater anymore.