Starsky & Hutch (Widescreen Edition)

Exclusive Date Score:

4/10

If your really lucky, or born after 1975, your date won't have seen the original TV series, so you might get away with this as a date movie. For us, don't bother, you'll only end up disappointed.

Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson--dark, wiry, and tense meets blond, lanky, and loose--make a solid comic team (and previously appeared together in Zoolander), but the funniest man in Starsky and Hutch is Vince Vaughn. Vaughn dives into his role as a sleazy drug dealer (who nonetheless buys a pony for his daughter's bat mitzvah) with the offhand zest that he brings to almost every role (from Swingers to Old School) and effortlessly steals every scene he's in. Vaughn has concocted a new and undetectable kind of cocaine, and only two cops who aren't afraid to break the rules--our titular pair--can catch him. But the plot isn't the point; mocking-yet-loving jabs at the '70s, including the homoerotic overtones of Starsky and Hutch's partnership, are what this movie is about. The satire is surprisingly mild but entertaining nonetheless, particularly when Vaughn or Snoop Dogg (as informant Huggy Bear) hold the screen. --Bret Fetzer

The movie is a far cry from comedy, humor, storyline and all things that make a successful movie successful. It just had to happen, right Ben? It's all too common to see so much storyline potential ruined, but at least the movie makes for a good retrospective memory test. If you're familiar with the TV series you can explain to those watching with you why certain things happen. Except for the car jumps, for them there is no explanation  - Robert Lee, aLoveLinksPlus.com reviewer

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