The original 1970's buddy-cop show on which Starsky & Hutch is based is only funny in retrospect because it took itself so seriously. The whole belted sweater get-up, not to mention those hairdos, were all actual style statements back in the seventies. They really fit this decade much better, at least in terms of milking ridiculous laughs.
Starsky & Hutch sees buddy-cops David Starsky (Ben Stiller) and Ken Hutchinson (Owen Wilson) team up to stop a sinister drug kingpin (Vince Vaughn), who is himself replete with a veritable wardrobe of beautiful-hardly-clothed women. Along the way, the crime-busting duo teams up with a couple of cheerleaders (Carmen Electra and Amy Smart), a creepy inmate (Will Ferrell), and an informant named Huggy Bear (Snoop Dogg, proving that it is possible to have a worse name than Snoop Dogg).
Sure Wilson and Stiller are irreverently quirky, pandering for a bunch of easy laughs that they had to actually earn with smart, dark humor two years ago in The Royal Tenenbaums. But this movie is lighter than that dark comedy, funnier too, and certainly more ludicrous and emotionally accessible. No, it doesn't deal with any serious issues, unless you call finally, once and for all, outing the afro as the worst invention since nose-hair-clippers serious.
Vaugh and Dogg are throwaway roles, but both actors (does the latter really
qualify?) seem to relish their respective parts. Equally silly and stupid are Electra and Smart. But this movie isn't about any of them. It's about Stiller and Wilson.
Stiller and Wilson brilliantly turn the boring traditional role of two street smart, tough guy detectives right on its head by channeling two tough-guys-who-are-comfortable-enough-with-their-masculinity-to-sort-of-you-know-like-each-other-maybe-a-little. But it's cool, they can still feel like hetero men ‘cause they get to carry guns and drive a red-and-white Ford Torino.
Starsky & Hutch certainly isn't comedic genius at work, but it's pretty amusing in its shamelessness. Still, it remains a mystery how anyone could have ever thought that any of the things that are worn, driven, and done in this movie could actually be cool, even if it was the ‘70's.
Starsky & Hutch is rated PG-13 for drug content, sexual situations, partial nudity, language, and some violence.
John Visclosky. John Visclosky is, suffice it to say, "hardly the sharpest intellectual tool in the shed," which is why he has stupidly chosen to here address himself in the third person. He's a mellow sort of guy who enjoys movies and sharing his feelings and innermost … More »
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