I think I know what happened here. Someone came up with three really good jokes and decided that an entire film could be created around them. For insurance, that same someone decided to slap those jokes into a big-screen version of a 70s television series, hoping that the identification would also bring in a ready-made audience. Alas, the series was Starsky and Hutch, a show that never quite achieved the cult status of, say, Star Trek or even The Brady Bunch. Obviously, there are going to be problems.
The biggest one is that our heroes, Owen Wilson as the hip and ethically flexible Ken Hutchinson, and Ben Stiller, as his uptight, by-the-book partner, David Starsky, have all the chemistry of an underdone soufflé. Sure, it seems like mixing up Wilson’s wistful, childlike wonder and Stiller’s maniacal intensity would be a good idea, and if there’d been any decent writing here, that might have paid off. As it is, we’ll never know. The film lurches madly between those three really funny moments, skirting the shores of amusing and getting stuck in the doldrums of painfully unfunny. Those writers seem to have thought that by setting the story in the 70s, most of their comedic work was done. There is a point to be made there, what with the haircuts, the fashion, the music, the ubiquitous giant disco ball, it was a strange and silly time that those of us who lived through it look back upon with equal parts horror and shame. Putting Wilson and Stiller in tight jeans and period haircuts is not enough. The film plays just like the television series in plotting, pacing, and camera work. There is no edge, unless you count a pimped-out Snoop Dog as police snitch, Huggy Bear; there is no wit, unless you count a cheerleader stripping down in a locker room while being interrogated by the titular duo; and no real parody, unless the fondue reference does it for you. Its just our boys donning silly disguises and following leads that aren’t there ion order to track down a mega shipment of cocaine, and not just any cocaine, either. This stuff has been chemically altered to taste like artificial sweetener and is sniff-proof, as in drug sniffing dogs don’t notice it. The nadir of the action, even worse than when the boys don mime outfits, is when Starsky unwittingly uses a few heaping teaspoons of the new coke to sweeten his coffee and then faces off in a dance duel with an egg-shaped disco king as the club’s DJ calls the action. It’s not only pointless, but kinda creepy. Fortunately there’s an uncredited Will Ferrell, as a needlework enthusiast and small-time punk doing time in the slammer to liven things up for us. His few scenes are a shining oasis in the rest of this dreck as he comes on to Hutch with some odd, dragon-related requests involving bellybuttons in exchange for information. Let’s just say that oatmeal will never be the same for some of us.
As for the other two jokes, one involves a donut, the other a dead pony and since both are contextual, there’s no point in proloning the discussion with them.
STARSKY & HUTCH is a bad movie and it poses a very serious question. Why do producers continue to churn out recycled television as big-screen sludge? Can you say WILD WILD WEST? THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES? Even the Star Trek franchise only works half the time and thats with the original cast intact. Im not saying never, ever, mine television for feature films, but I am saying that maybe its time we all chipped in to buy Hollywood a clue.
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