Starsky & Hutch (2004)

Directed by: Todd Phillips | 101 minutes | action, comedy, crime | Actors: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Snoop Dogg, Fred Williamson, Vince Vaughn, Juliette Lewis, Amy Smart, Carmen Electra, Chris Penn, Jason Bateman, George Cheung, Brande Roderick, Molly Sims, Matt Walsh, GT Holme

The original “Starsky & Hutch” series dates back to a time when Johan Neeskens’ sideburns and the cultivation of undisciplined behavior set the tone. In ‘Boogie Nights’ the period was already beautifully portrayed: hideous mustache men with beautiful blondes as the main target. Police series were the playground for free-spirited machos and were rampant in the second half of the seventies. Ready for a style parody you might say.

With the remake of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ the blockbuster action formula was chosen, so there was still some wiggle room for the two friends Stiller and Wilson as Starsky & Hutch. The duo struggles through many obligatory style jokes at the beginning of the film (including ‘Easy Rider’, disco) and it simply seems to turn into ‘Dumb and Dumber’ meets ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’. Owen Wilson behaves like Domme August, while Stiller plays his complexes in his well-known ADD way.

Things start to pick up in the second half of the film, partly because Wilson really gets into his element. As soon as he realizes that he would do better to let Ben Stiller shine, we start laughing. An original interrogation scene; an innocent pony who dies. Much more fun than the initial thirteen-in-a-dozen jokes and seventies headlines, so the two can still flatten a room; although Wilson and Stiller seem to be on autopilot, they are clearly having fun. Furthermore, Snoop Doggy Dogg lets himself be typecast and Juliette Lewis plays a gangster sweetheart with a suntan color in which an orange bikini can disappear.

It is becoming clear that the long-haired decade is now enough. So on to the flea market and to the eighties; Wilson and Stiller would certainly not look out of place as Face and Murdoch (‘The A-Team’). ‘Starsky & Hutch’ will not go down in history as the movie about popular culture in the 1970s, nor does it really stand out among the comedies that came out this year. A warm spring evening with a white beer in prospect will certainly not spoil them.