Reel To Reel:
Starsky & Hutch
How It Rates: ***Starring: Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Snoop Dog
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Partial Nudity (half a boob), Language, Homosexual Erotic References, Drug References, Comic-Book Violence
Preconceived Notions: Trailer looked promising. But will this just degrade into another Charlie's Angels 2?
The Bottom Line: Better than you'd expect, not perfect, but a heckuva lot better than many big-screen TV series treatments.
Starsky & Hutch is actually fun without degrading into total dorkiness, and it's a lesson many TV-show movies should've learned from frame one. Owen Wilson is the laid-back Starsky, Ben Stiller is pent-up Hutch, and Snoop Dog is faux-pimp Huggy Bear, their smooth tipster. The cherry red Ford Gran Torino stars as itself.
The cop duo blasts around Bay City trying to bust drug kingpin Reese Feldman (Vince Vaughn) who's developed cocaine undetectible to drug dogs. Naturally, it's undetectible to certain other police characters too, or we wouldn't have a picture.
Banter between the title characters made the 1970's series enjoyable. The film smartly picks up on that, as Owen Wilson just breezes through the picture much like many of his other roles. He doesn't so much fit the part as the part fits him. Ben Stiller has more work cut out. Snoop just plays it cool and smooth... and refreshingly restrained from his drug-and-sex persona, looking more like a playa than the real thing.
Starky & Hutch washes just enough 70's nostalgia over us without making us drown. There is the obligitory scene in a disco, but it's more fun than silly. Owen Wilson even gets to riff on the one-hit wonder of original Hutch, David Soul's "Don't Give Up On Us, Baby."
This film knows how much to push and how much to let ride. But one segment may push some viewers a little far -- a scene where Starsky and Hutch interview a football cheerleader in a locker room as she's changing. She seems oblivious to what the two men in front of her are looking at, and it's definitely no wardrobe malfunction.
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