Starsky & Hutch
Reviewed by Rich Drees
Die hard fans of the original Starsky And Hutch may not approve of
the decidedly lighter tone of this updating of the classic 1970s police
drama, those who go into this film with an open mind may find themselves in
for a pleasant and often very funny two hours.
David Starsky (Ben Stiller) is a cop in 1970s Bay City who is a little too intense for his fellow officers. His overworked boss teams him the overly laid back Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson (Owen Wilson) and the two soon find themselves on the trail of a new form of cocaine that is making its way into the city. With the help of a local street hood named Huggy Bear (Snoop Dogg), they track to drugs to Reese Feldman (Vince Vaughn), a well-respected business man whom their boss doesn’t believe could be behind such a plot. Despite being suspended from the force following a disastrous attempt to arrest Feldman at his daughter’s bat mitzvah, the duo vow to bring the criminal mastermind to justice.
Like the original Starsky & Hutch and other police television dramas
of the 1970s, this film version relies on many tried and true storytelling
formulas. The two leads are polar opposites whose personalities will at
first clash, though we know that they’ll be friends who put aside their
differences in order to take down the bad guy. There’s also the obligatory
“Put on suspension for screwing up but still go on to catch the bad guy“
plot point. Much of the script seems familiar and in the hands of a
different cast, this film would be rather stale. However, the screenwriters
have instead fashioned a comedy that allows its humor to evolve out of the
characters and situations, rather than try to be a parody of the genre. The
end result is a rather entertaining buddy comedy.
While Wilson delivers yet another charismatically breezy performance, it is Stiller who turns in his strongest character work in a while. Having spent his last several movies playing variations one the same uptight character, he creates a much more rounded character with David Starsky, which recalls his best work from his 1992 sketch series The Ben Stiller Show and his 2000 film Zoolander. Stiller grounds Starsky in enough reality to all the comedy moments play naturally without veering off into the over the top antics other comic actors might take in such scenes as when Starsky accidentally “sweetens” a cup of coffee with cocaine.
In some ways Starsky & Hutch is a love letter to 70s culture from winking tributes to Easy Rider and Saturday Night Fever to the casting of blaxploitation mainstay Fred Williamson as Starsky and Hutch’s harried boss. In addition, director Todd Phillips shows that he’s studied the original series well as details from costumes to shot composition recall, and in many duplicate, elements from the original series. The movie goes so far as to have Wilson’s Hatch pick up a guitar and serenade two lovely young ladies with “Don’t Give Up On Us Baby,” a hit single for the series’ Hutch, David Soul.