Ben Stiller
Owen Wilson
Snoop Dogg
Fred Williamson
Vince Vaughan
directed by
Todd Phillips
Over the past couple of weeks, my film viewing has been a bit on the heavy side. It has consisted of Braveheart, Schindler's List, The Last Temptation Of Christ, two viewings of The Passion Of The Christ and the romantic comedy Something's Gotta Give, which depressed me more than any of the previously listed films. Suffice to say, I needed two things - a hug and some levity. I haven't received the hug yet, but I did find plenty of welcome laughter in Starsky & Hutch.
The film, a prequel of sorts to the 1970's TV show, stars Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Stiller plays Dave Starsky, a straight-laced Bay City cop living under the shadow of his late mother (who was a former police officer in the city). Wilson is Ken 'Hutch' Hutchinson, a more laid back cop who is a lot less on the straight and narrow when it comes to law enforcement.
When the boys goof up their individual assignments at the beginning of the film, their Captain, Doby (Fred Williamson), decides to partner them together. On their first day out, they discover a dead body washed up on the shore. With the help of Hutch's street informant, Huggy Bear (Snoop Dogg), their investigation leads them up against the city's top drug smuggler, Reese Feldman (Vince Vaughn), who is currently attempting to smuggle in his biggest cocaine shipment yet.
It takes about ten to fifteen minutes for the movie to find its groove and kick into gear. Once it does, Starsky & Hutch quickly becomes very entertaining and funny. Plot and character depth are about where you would expect them to be (non-existent) as are the clichés that define the buddy cop genre (plentiful). Yet, director Todd Phillips gets a lot of comedic mileage out of said clichés and mechanisms of 1970s cop shows.
Unlike the dreadful Charlie's Angels films, Starsky & Hutch isn't filled with in-jokes, anachronisms or visual effects to make its heroes superhuman. Phillips aims for the look and feel like a 1970s production, and with the help of cinematographer Barry Peterson, production designer Ed Verreaux and screenwriters John O'Brien and Scott Armstrong, this is nicely accomplished.
The director is also lucky enough to have a talented cast to bring the film to life as well. Stiller and Wilson, for whom this movie number six they have worked together on, are perfectly matched as the Bay City crime fighters. Stiller is the perfect uptight Ying to Wilson's laid-back Yang. The two have great chemistry on screen, and do a great job bringing to life the script's homoerotic overtones without being too obvious or offensive.
The duo are backed up by fine support from Vaughn as the bad guy, Williamson as the stereotypical police sergeant and Will Ferrell, whose priceless cameo as a convict with a very strange dragon fetish is worth the price of admission alone. Carmen Electra and Amy Smart provide some wonderful eye candy as a pair of cheerleaders who help out the boys, while Snoop Dogg seems a bit underused as Huggy Bear. He delivers his lines fine, he just isn't very funny.
Did I mention that Carmen Electra and Amy Smart play cheerleaders?
While the world wasn't exactly clamouring for a big screen version of Starsky & Hutch, or indeed another big screen adaptation of a TV series that wasn't actually all that great to start with, this provides a lot of laughs, is very easy to take and makes for a lightweight fun night out.
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