Originally published 3/15/04
Starsky & Hutch
Director: Todd Phillips
Writers: Based on characters created by William Blinn; story by Stevie Long and John O’Brien, screenplay by John O’Brien and Todd Phillips & Scott Armstrong
Producers: William Blinn, Stuart Cornfeld, Akiva Goldsman, Tony Ludwig, Alan Riche
Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Snoop Dogg, Vince Vaughn
I don’t remember the 70’s, only having been alive during a quarter of them. I do remember all the jokes about the 70’s, which helps me in my task. I appreciate the way that director Todd Phillips populates this movie with the detritus of a decade without leaning on it too much as the joke itself (I’m looking in your direction, The Wedding Singer). Hutch (Owen Wilson) has an 8-track at his place, and over a meal they drink RC Cola. The movie feels no need to stop and point it out, and it becomes funnier that way.
I have never seen a single episode of Starsky and Hutch, which doesn’t help me in my task. Because this is a movie that, in trying to be all things to all people, struggles to be one thing at a time. Sometimes it spoofs the show – at least, I think it does. Sometimes it spoofs the 70’s in general. Sometimes it’s just a playing field for Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson to do what People Love Seeing Them Do.
It seems to be here at all simply as a matter of cultural inevitability – that strand of our DNA that can compel us to watch hours of I Love the 80s has also led to the revival and transformation of countless TV titles that should have been one-offs, Burma Shave ads along the cultural highways. That more money is likely spent now producing this goof on Starsky & Hutch than was possibly spent in the entire run of the original series is a fact whose ultimate meaning eludes me.
Anyway, it’s here now, though much of the time, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are simply playing themselves playing Starsky & Hutch, mismatched detectives battling the scum of Bay City. That is, unless, in the original, Starsky was an uptight goon who constantly embarrassed himself (Stiller has as many variations on the furrowed brow as the Inuit have words for snow) and Hutch was a vaguely stoned, smirking surfer-rascal. I am willing to be corrected on this point. I laugh because Stiller and Wilson are naturally funny and talented comedians; though if at any point they did something similar to their forebearers in the roles at all beyond the costumes and the car, it failed to make an impression on me.
Vince Vaughn and Jason Bateman, meanwhile, are having a grand old time playing a fantastically-sleazy drug kingpin (who nonetheless buys his daughter a pony on her Bat Mitzvah) and his brainy majordomo with the nigh-invisible fuzzy mustache. They play it as straight as if this was the show itself, and had me smiling every time they were on screen because of their unwinking gusto.
Snoop Dogg plays Snoop Dogg, but they all call him Huggy Bear. And every so often Fred “The Hammer” Williamson shows up as our heroes’ supervisor, who looks like he doesn’t get what any of them are doing, and it makes him angry.
The story, which is occasionally important, is about a large shipment of a chemically-altered cocaine that gives you the same effect, but smells and tastes (even to highly-trained drug-sniffing dogs) like artificial sweetener. No bonus points if you guess whether or not that comes into play. Our heroes pursue this bust as they clash over their opposing methods, tease each other, and grow into buddies.
And here is one of the inherent translational gaffes that tends to occur between TV shows and movies. In a TV show, a relationship is established quickly and then riffed on for years. Growth and change is defied willfully – at least until the ratings slip. But there are books which Hollywood executives read that say a Movie Uses a Different Formula.
So even as I’m laughing, scenes from the Movie Formula creak into view and give me pause. Once in awhile even director Phillips sees them for what they are and does his best to tweak them. Then there are others – like a wholly awkward and artificial stretch where our heroes go their separate ways, Hutch feeling “betrayed” by a snippy report Starsky typed up about his behavior weeks before. Wilson is no more convincing in this beat than when he played exactly the same beat last year in Shanghai Knights (even some of the dialogue sounds identical).
What is the purpose, I found myself asking? Not even the dust mites in the house thought they wouldn’t reconcile. But to ask questions like that leads only to danger.
In an encouraging sign of comic generosity, attention is lavished even on the smaller roles, like Will Ferrell as a jailhouse informant with an array of unique fetishes, Juliette Lewis as the drug lord’s admirably upbeat mistress, and Amy Smart and Carmen Electra, playing 70’s cheerleaders whose ultimate importance to the movie begins and ends with the fact that they are playing 70’s cheerleaders.
Once in awhile a joke goes almost spectacularly wrong – I might be a fuddy-duddy in a Gen-Y body but I’ve yet to see the hilarity in a coked-up policeman wildly firing his gun around at a disco. And mimes? Tsk tsk.
Many of the nostalgic references I was clearly supposed to guffaw in recognition of, I didn’t. But on the whole, with its slapdash attitude and great soundtrack, it appealed to that same lazy pleasure center in my brain – the one that appreciates Family Feud reruns and Michael Ian Black pontificating on The A-Team. On the days when I’m simply not getting enough done, and wearing too deep a groove in my couch, I wonder if I should have that part lasered out. But I suppose it’s necessary, and because of it, the movie gets a positive reaction from me.