| Starsky & Hutch Review Tentatively scheduled for a late fall 2003 or early 2004 release. Currently Carmen Electra is in talks to play the love interest of Owen Wilson.
Another old TV classic hits the big screen, lets hope it is more like Charlie's Angels than I Spy.
Based on the 1975 ABC TV series, Starsky and Hutch will have Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller zooming around town in the classic 'marked' red and white 1974 Ford Torino, solving crimes with the help of Huggy Bear, their street informant, and annoying their boss, Capt. Dobey.
When everything so right goes so wrong.
Everything is in place for this flick to be a grand slam. A great cast that works very well with one another and within comedic counterparts meshes perfectly with the 70’s T.V. original. And that car, that Torino…how can it go wrong?
Well, just where every film takes its first mis-step. In the script.
If it ain’t on the page, it won’t play on the stage…or screen, or holographic projection. No matter the medium, the words and actions matter folks.
What is weird is that despite a bazillion cop buddy flicks having entered the universe before Starsky and Hutch delivers nothing new in the two oddballs who don’t get along schtick. Starsky & Hutch is at its most painful when it relies on the differences and standard yelling between the two leads to carry a scene.
Then there are the scenes that scream out the potential that was lost here. A truly funny scene that involves both Starsky and Hutch being stuck with knives thrown by a little asian midget (or as the case may be a 10 year old). Or the ‘character’ created by Stiller where his mere pronunciation of ‘Do it!’ was enough to make me smile.
Then there are the scenes that have a distinctly deja vu feel to them (a dance off with Starsky in a disco compared with the ‘walk-off’ in Zoolander). Another comparison could be the Will Ferrell connection. Ferrell was the funniest thing in Zoolander and his rather small cameo in this film proves to be on par with that.
The script though, the script is where the mistakes are. However if that is the case, the finger also gets directed slightly at the director, as Todd Phillips also helped write the screenplay. Now it sounds harsh to say that there is even a need of finger pointing but this film plays less like a film and more like episodic television. One section is very funny, then a long stretch with nothing much happening, and then boom! It’s funny again. This stems from a disparity between story and comedy it seems. When the film tries to actually follow a story line it needs to rely on the villain and while they have a particularly campy villain in Vince Vaughan, the menace never comes through so elements like the Lethal Weapon house explosion seem out of place and rather over done. Then it shifts into comedic gear again and we quickly forgive the film until the next ‘plot’ point.
You can’t hate a film like Starsky and Hutch where it obviously had it’s heart in the right place (so much so it includes a rather weak cameo by the original stars Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul) but you can be disappointed in the final result.
I mean really…the Torino…and no over the top Blues Brothers style car chase!?! They didn't ignore the car altogether with a few tossed in montage style shots and a weak golf course chase but these never really show off the car in any meaningful way.
That is a disappointment.
Final tally: 2.8 out of 5. I can’t quite give it the passing grade of 3 but I can’t quite say it was horrible either.
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