Peter Sellers was a great comic actor but once in awhile comic actors are not enough to turn a film into a success. One should say that regarding any film genre. Much depends on the script and how the actor and much interpret that depends on the supporting cast and existence of a credible subplot.
Henry Mancini struggled with the fact of having to compose a musical piece for the film but I found the score to be quite appropriate. The party must have been shot with the idea of exposing the comic abilities of the actor because of the shallowness of the plot. In fact there is little more to hold the story together except that Peter gets to a party that he wasn't supposed to and he has his eyes on a sweet French actress, he latter takes home after drowning his party hosts in sudsy water.
Much of what comics get today for comedy material comes from past greats like Sellers and the antics shines through as he clumsily ruins a film set and clumsily falters at every chance he has to make himself a desired guest at a party of the film producer, he is mistakenly invited to. But you and I know that the ineptness is what the director wanted to carry forth in the film because the film script is short and there is little substance to be gained from a story that concentrates on the in fighting between the cooking staff and the microcosmic world between the guests of the party.
Portraying Sellers as a bumbling Indian actor might not be something that Indians would appreciate but for those able to laugh at themselves, this is a sort of parody created between those who are forever apologetic like Sellers' character and those who notice nothing but their own grandeur. The self-centred world of certain Hollywood types is thrown in to create the comic tension that an actor like Sellers would have thrived on would he be around to do a remake of the film. The movie climaxes, if one dares to say, with the fact that the Indian actor is found out at the party as a guest who should not have been on any invitation list. The ending is reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin walking off into the sunset with Paulette Goddard in an early silent film; Sellers gets to drive his new found girlfriend in his three wheeled Morgan which itself must have been a joke to all those Hollywood tycoons of the day.
