Movie's no blast from the past

There's wittiness, but the film could have been done better.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Never as consistently funny or zany as you'd hoped it would be, "Starsky & amp; Hutch" feels instead like a partially missed opportunity for director Todd Phillips whose "Old School" and "Road Trip" both delivered a higher giggle ratio.
Since turning Nick at Nite favorites into movies (and potential big-screen franchises) has become a cottage industry in today's Hollywood, the 1970s Paul Michael Glaser-David Soul cop-buddy show felt like a natural.
Hip in its day, the original could have either been played straight (and improved with a better grade of actors) like last summer's "S.W.A.T.," or camped to high heaven like "The Brady Bunch" or "Charlie's Angels" movies.
Phillips and co-writers John O'Brien and Scot Armstrong seem to be aiming for the latter, but rarely reach the consistent heights of, say, Betty Thomas' 1995 "Brady Bunch Movie." Accordingly, it's a lot wittier around the edges than it is at the center.
Work well together
Ben Stiller (Starsky) and Owen Wilson (Hutch) previously worked together in Wes Anderson's sublime "The Royal Tennenbaums" and Stiller's underrated "Zoolander," so reteaming for a parody of an old TV show must have felt like a bit of a letdown.
Fortunately, the actors work well together -- they seem to be amused by the same things, which is always good in this type of hit-and-miss farce -- and create a genuinely fond chemistry. If only their roles had been more smartly written!
As Starsky, Stiller is basically playing another variation on his anal-retentive jerk persona ( & quot;Along Came Polly," "Meet the Parents," "There's Something About Mary," et al), while Wilson's Hutch merely reprises the slackerish imp he's already done to death in everything from his "Shanghai" pairings with Jackie Chan to January's "The Big Bounce."
There's no good reason why gruff Captain Doby (amusingly played by blaxploitation icon Fred Williamson) should have partnered them together in the first place except as the excuse for a series of not-exactly-fresh oil and water jokes.
The case they're working on -- getting the goods on upscale cocaine dealer Reese Feldman (Vince Vaughn, the quintessence of '70s cool, down to the handlebar mustache and lacquered perm) -- is standard cop movie fare.
Thanks in large part to his 6-foot-5-inch frame, Vaughn is that rare actor who can look both profoundly silly or spookily menacing ("Clay Pigeons," "Domestic Disturbance") depending upon the role. Here he's just goofy, which is about all that's required of him.
From Reese's dim-witted dealings with loyal flunky Kevin (the terrific Jason Bateman who, alas, isn't given the opportunity to shine the way he does weekly on the cult Fox series, "Arrested Development & quot;), to the way he juggles his bimbo mistress (Juliette Lewis in an interesting career departure) and mercenary wife (Darlena Tejeiro) at the same charity fund-raiser, Vaughn might have stolen the movie from Stiller and Wilson if Snoop Dogg hadn't already beaten him to the punch line.
Snoop's success
Dogg displays such formidable comedy chops playing Huggy Bear, the baddest Mack Daddy of them all, that every screenwriter in Tinseltown is probably working overtime to pen him his first starring vehicle.
Besides Dogg, the choicest bits are the throwaway stuff: Wilson serenading two hot-to-trot cheerleaders with "Don't Give Up on Us, Baby" (the chart-busting single by then-Hutch Soul); a bat mitzvah that goes hilariously awry; Starsky's beloved cherry-red Ford Gran Torino; and the use of some typically cheesy '70s TV cop show music as background noise during the film's climactic chase.
Otherwise, Will Ferrell's cheeky extended cameo as the heroes' kinky jailhouse snitch is just about the only thing in "Starsky & amp; Hutch" that goes too far. And I mean that as a supreme compliment to Ferrell, since so much of the film surrounding him feels hesitant and halting.
XWrite Milan Paurich at milanpaurich@aol.com.