Starsky & Hutch Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)March 5th, 2004
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Starsky & Hutch, the latest television show turned unnecessary feature film, isn't as bad as Wild Wild West, The Mod Squad, or Scooby Doo, but it's not nearly as good as The Brady Bunch, either. Or even SWAT. Call it Charlie's Angels, only with a couple of unattractive guys instead of the eye candy. If you're asking yourself what the point of Charlie's Angels would be without the dames, welcome to my boat.
Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul, stars of the watershed buddy-cop series that aired during the last half of the '70s, are replaced here by Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, respectively, as Dave Starsky and Ken Hutchinson. The folks (writer-director Todd Phillips and writer Scot Armstrong) who brought you Old School and Road Trip fashion Hutch as a prequel to the TV show, beginning before the two Bay City police detectives became reluctant partners, chasing down bad guys in their red and white 1974 Gran Torino aided by tips from street informant Huggy Bear, who is played here by Snoop Dogg (Glaser and Soul have cameos in Hutch, while original Huggy - Antonio Fargas - is nowhere to be seen).
The bulk of the story, other than the gradual bonding of the titular protagonists, centers around the development of an odorless cocaine by two seedy criminals played by Vince Vaughn and Jason Bateman. Their plan is to distribute the product to even seedier criminals (like Richard Edson) under the guise of a children's charity. And since the drugs are odorless, plan on the appropriate wackiness when someone confuses the stuff with sugar. This ain't exactly highbrow stuff were dealing with here. Eurotrip was way funnier, even if you compare only the mime jokes the two films share. Jesus, has it only been two weeks since I've seen mime jokes on the screen?
Stiller and Wilson don't play the same version of the characters you may remember from the television show so much as they are playing the same roles they've been playing over and over for the last couple of years. Stiller is the uptight guy who wants to be as cool as Glaser was, while Wilson - who looks more and more like Queer Eye's Carson Kressley every time I see him - leans on his charm and drawl like a crutch. Their scenes together seem like they were 100% improvised. The idea may have been a good one, since Stiller and Wilson riffing could create some pretty serious comedy (they've already been in, like, 98 films together). But it just didn't pan out. And, by the way, if their scenes weren't improvised, then this is the worst writing I may have ever experienced.
Hutch absolutely reeks of a rush job, which seems plausible when you consider the amount of films Stiller has been in over the last few months. Rushing a product to the screen, even when you cram it full of the same people (Vaughn, Will Ferrell, Juliette Lewis, and the Bat Mitzvah band were all in Old School) isn't always the best idea. Mad props to the cheesy period junk in the background of the scenes, and to the casting of Blaxploitation legend Fred Williamson as Captain Doby, but for a better spoof of '70s television cop shows, just stay home and wait for The Beastie Boys' Sabotage to play on MTV2.
1:33 - PG-13 for drug content, sexual situations, partial nudity, language and some violence
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