Boiled down to basics, Starsky & Hutch sounds anything but special. A big-screen revamp of a cult TV show? Surely that bandwagon'll collapse if it takes another passenger. A cop-buddy yarn about mismatched partners who grow to love each other? As the old saying goes, we need some new clichés. But factor in Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson and the fog of over-familiarity lifts to reveal one of the best comedies of the year.
Playing permed neurotic (Stiller's Starsky) against sun-kissed chill-out zone (Wilson's Hutch), our boys share a chemistry so fizzy it refreshes even the stalest material. Take, for example, the locker-room scene where a cheerleader casually strips down to her birthday suit as the cops' questions roll. It's a sexist, sub-Police Academy skit, but it conquers the chuckle muscles thanks to the leads' perfectly timed reactions.
Happily, most of the gags don't require such a heroic rescue effort. Without question, this is Road Trip/Old School helmer Todd Phillips' finest to date, steering so smoothly from comic set-piece to comic set-piece that you barely notice the near-absence of plot. The story pits the newly paired S'n'H against Vince Vaughn's big-time coke dealer, who's cooked up a variety of blow that anyone - - say, an uptight Bay City detective - - could mistake for artificial sweetener. A great excuse, then, for an extended wired-Starsky sequence that ricochets from a dig at Hutch No1 David Soul's pop career to a disco dance-off and then a Wilson/ Carmen Electra/Amy Smart threesome.
Winning stuff, but it's not the movie's showstopper. No, that crown goes to the jailhouse hilarity of the 'tecs' `interview' with Will Ferrell, the uncredited Elf man's dragon-obsessed con forcing our heroes into compromising positions. Sure, it was a given that Phillips and co would flush out the original show's homoerotic undertones. But they don't stoop to snide, sticky insinuation, instead playing it silly and sweet, amping up the pic's easy, breezy charm.
So it's a shame that the reedy Snoop Dogg can't match their class as kitsch-clad informant Huggy Bear, that Juliette Lewis' role amounts only to smiles and swimwear and that the climactic Gran Torino stunt is more belly-flop than belly-laugh. But we're talking minor scuffs on gleaming paintwork. Fuelled by the sparkiest double act in Tinseltown, Starsky & Hutch speeds to the top of the retro-com rankings.
DVD Extras:
On the easygoing commentary, Phillips chats about how he saw the movie as a lo-fi love letter to the original show and cop-buddy movies in general. Phillips also reveals that he had intended to show an extended version of the Stiller-and-Wilson-play-dragons scene but it would have meant failing to hang on to their PG-13 rating in the States. Tragically, the scene isn't to be found on this disc. The real let-down, though, is that there's only a sprinkling of behind-the-scenes titbits. In lieu of a proper Making Of there's the spoofy `Last Look', nine minutes of Phillips backslapping the shoot intercut with everyone else whinging. (Lewis: ""It's like working with 90 10 year olds!"") Impressively straightfaced, but the joke's soon knackered. In the deleted-scene camp, you'll find Wilson pissing against a wall, more stunt driving and Chris Penn's obnoxious rozzer taking a spanking. Both Dogg and Vaughn get bite-sized solo spots, the former parading his pimp-outfit wardrobe while the latter kills three minutes playing a Brady Bunch trivia game with a security guard. Sadly, there's little else to declare: a solid trailer that spills one of the best gags but leaves you wanting more, plus an over-extended gag reel whose highlight is Snoop dissing his pet iguana. A few light laughs, then, but rather lacking in detail.
