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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 – |
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for drug content, sexual
situations, partial nudity, language and some violence |
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