Once again, a cop show from the 70s is taken out of mothballs for a feature film treatment. And like other resurrected icons from that era, Starsky & Hutch is played for laughs. While the movie is mostly pretty amusing, it is seldom laugh-out-loud funny, and it's connection to the original series is gratuitous at best. Still, there are far worse remakes out there, and Warner has put together a pretty good disc.

Ben Stiller plays David Starsky, an no-nonsense, by-the-book cop who means well, but whose overly serious dedication to his job makes him the butt of a lot of jokes in the department. After angering his police captain (Fred Williamson, in a throw-away role), he's partnered up with Ken Hutchinson (Owen Wilson), who's the complete opposite of Starsky: he's laid-back, lazy, and not above bending the law a bit in order to do his job, such as calling on his flamboyant pimp friend, Huggy Bear (Snoop Dogg) for information. Meanwhile, well-respected businessman, Reese Feldman (Vince Vaughn) has developed a type of cocaine undetectable by drug-sniffing dogs, and plans to put it out on the market. While investigating a murder that occurs at the beginning of the film, Starsky & Hutch follow a trail that leads to Feldman. Of course, the plot is perfunctory, existing simply to allow for set-pieces in which the leads pretty much play the same two guys they do in all their movies together. In fact, the movie could probably be titled Stiller & Wilson and it wouldn't make much difference, since they don't act even remotely like the original characters (unlike The Brady Bunch Movie , where each actor played their roles with such dead-on accuracy it simply added to the humor). The girls in the Charlie's Angels remake didn't either, but the difference is that, even though it contained some humor, Charlie's Angels was primarily an action movie. For a comedy that wants us to laugh at the silly 70s, aside from the first appearance of Starsky's red and white Grand Torino (admittedly, I grinned at the sight of it) and some of the goofy clothes, this movie could have taken place in 2004. Still, it's mildly amusing, and the scenes featuring Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear are funny indeed. Will Farrell also has a good cameo as a convict informant with a dragon fetish.

The transfer of the film to DVD is terrific. The picture is presented in its original 2:35:1 aspect ratio, and looks good. Black tones are accurate and the colors are vibrant and sharp. The soundtrack is rendered in 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround, and it's a really good transfer, with great balance.

There's a full-length audio commentary by director/co-writer Todd Phillips, which is fairly entertaining and informative. There's also a gag reel and some deleted scenes, many of which are good enough to prompt the viewer to wonder why they were cut out of the final version. The making-of featurette, "Last Look," is a mockumentary of sorts, and is sometimes funnier than anything in the movie itself.

Similar Films: Charlie's Angels; The Brady Bunch Movie; S.W.A.T.; Zoolander; The Naked Gun; Police Academy Summary: Fans of Stiller and Wilson will probably get more out of Starsky & Hutch than people who fondly remember the original series, since it is more of a showcase for the two comedic actors than it is a remake. It isn't always terribly funny, but I mostly smiled and/or chuckled while sitting through it.