Starsky & Hutch

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Herald rating: * * *

Here's a sign it's all gone a bit dull down the local multiplex these days. There are two Ben Stiller movies playing. He's in romantic comedy Along Came Polly opposite Jennifer Aniston. And he's playing Starsky in this affectionate if less than respectful spoof of the 70s cop show with regular offsider Owen Wilson as Hutch.

It's fitfully funny for its gags, which can feel lifted from a '76 issue of Mad magazine, but held together by its one big joke - this isn't an action comedy, it's a romantic one.

In this, the uptight Starsky has more on-screen chemistry with the go-with-the-flow Hutch than Stiller manages in the cinema next door with that gal from Friends.

The gay subtext plays affectionately with the '70s macho setting and produces some of the film's funniest, weirdest moments. Like when Wilson croons Don't Give Up On Us Baby (the hit by the original Hutch, David Soul) to an accidentally coke-addled Starsky. Or when the two interview prison inmate Big Earl (Will Farrell), who will talk only if the odd buddy cops do some very odd buddy things.

There is a plot, which runs like a prequel to the original series, in which Starsky and Hutch are first forced together as partners by their long-suffering captain. Soon there's a dead body, that cocaine, and connections to druglord Vince Vaughn which S&H investigate with help from Huggy Bear (rapper Snoop Dogg, who deserves his own film franchise or least a clothing line out of this).

But the story, of course, is incidental to a film that might be just as stupid, but is more erratically entertaining than the many previous cop-show big-screen retreads.

By not even trying to reinvent the television original as a big-screen action-fest - though the original car, the tomato red and white Ford Gran Torino gets its due - it gives the Stiller-Wilson double act plenty of space and time for us to ponder: just what is going on between those goofy guys from the fuzz? And how long before Starsky puts on the famous belted cardigan?

Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughan, Snoop Dogg Director: Todd Phillips Running time: 97 mins Rating: M (violence, offensive language) Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas from Thursday