Starsky & Hutch

Based on the 1970s television show, Starsky & Hutch follows police officers David Starsky (Ben Stiller) and Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (Owen Wilson) as they set out to stop Reese Feldman (Vince Vaughn) from unleashing an undetectable new variety of cocaine on the world. Filmmaker Todd Phillips delivers an irresistibly brisk comedy that fares impressively well in its first half, as the director, working from a script written with Scot Armstrong and John O’Brien, does a superb job of establishing the picture’s irreverent atmosphere and heightens the affable atmosphere with colorful visuals and stirring performances – with, in terms of the latter, Stiller and Wilson stepping into the shoes of their respective characters with an ease that proves impossible to resist. (And it doesn’t hurt, certainly, that the picture boasts compelling work from an eclectic supporting cast that includes Snoop Dogg, Jason Bateman, and Will Ferrell.) The ongoing inclusion of entertaining bits of stand-alone silliness (eg Ferrell’s appearance as a jail-house snitch with oddball sexual peccadilloes) certainly perpetuates Starsky & Hutch‘s engaging vibe, and yet it’s equally clear that the movie does begin to demonstrably run out of steam as it passes the one-hour mark (ie the screenplay’s episodic bent paves the way for a hit-and-miss narrative that’s increasingly more miss than hit, ultimately, with this especially true of a drastically unfunny sequence in which the protagonists dress as mimes and murder a pony). The end result is an erratic remake that probably could’ve used a little judicious editing and a shorter runtime, which is too bad, really, given that Starsky & Hutch features plenty of appealing elements and performances.

**1/2 out of ****