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The Main Characters
--David Starsky (Ben Stiller) is a by the books police officer who follows the rules to a T. He never can keep a partner for long and seems very taken aback when the captain gives him Ken Hutchinson as a partner.
--Ken Hutchinson (Owen Wilson) aka Hutch is an aimless cop who hasn’t done anything in a while, besides steal from stores. He gets caught so he lies and says he was doing undercover work. Captain Dobey lets it go, but not toally, he gives him a partner. He puts him with straight shooting Starsky to keep him straight.
--Huggy Bear (Snoop Dogg) is Hutch’s rather suspicious street informer and he helps out Starsky and Hutch on their crime investigation.
--Reese Feldman (Vince Vaughn) is a high profile drug dealer who is on the verge of making a huge deal with cocaine that is undetectable by dogs. Starsky and Hutch are sent to investigate him.
The Setting
1970’s California, complete with a Ford Torino hot rod and 70’s porn mustaches.
The Movie
Reese Feldman is a bad man. The first few minutes of the film he kills somebody on his yacht and dump him into the water. See, he killed him because he messed up somewhat on the huge drug deal he can pull off. He has found cocaine that cannot be detected by special police canines. David Starsky is a cop. He is as by the rules as you can be. He would not hesitate in asking a cop for his firearms badge. He’s that by the books. Perhaps it’s his gung-ho do it yourself crime fighting that leads to him never keeping a partner for long. Ken Hutchinson is a rogue cop of sorts. He gets busted for stealing from a shop with some other criminals and says he was actually just doing some undercover work. Police Captain Dobey decides to put the two cops together as partners and investigate the body that just turned up. They manage to trace it back to Reese Feldman but can’t quite nail him for the crime and end up getting in major trouble and getting their badges and guns taken away for a while. They won’t stop though because they know he’s up to something and use the help of Huggy Bear, Hutch’s somewhat questionable resource from the streets. With his help they plan one final attempt to nail Reese for his drug trafficking at an event his throwing.
My Review
First, I have to admit I’ve never seen the 70’s TV show so I don’t know how close it was to the original, or if it was completely mocking it or what. What I do know is that I enjoyed the movie. It provided some pretty good laughs from where my ass was sitting. The plot was pretty razor thin but that’s to be expected from a comedy. I mean, if anyone goes to see this movie thinking it’ll be Casablanca levels of plotness then you really shouldn’t be going. It’s an Owen Wilson/Ben Stiller buddy movie plain and simple.
From the start it was funny. Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller play off each other fantastically and provide many laughs. Snoop Dogg is surprisingly good in his role as street informer and I actually wished he were onscreen more. Vince Vaughn as usual gave a great performance. I can honestly say I laughed frequently during the movie. And for a comedy what more can you ask for? Is it the greatest movie ever? No. Will it be remembered next year? Probably not. All I know is that it was one of the funnier movies I saw for the first half of the year and I think it stack up well against Stiller’s other work. In two words, if you have a chance to see it, DO IT.
Overall Rating
**
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