Starsky & Hutch

Between 1975 and 1979, the red Ford Gran Turino with the white stripe was probably the coolest car on the planet. Starsky & Hutch was required Saturday night TV. Who did you prefer, cardigan-wearing Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) or blond Ken 'Hutch' Hutchinson (David Soul)? And wasn't Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas), the stoolie, the most exotic thing any British kid had ever seen. No one under 30 will have any share in this memory pool - which is a pity, because it means Stiller's uncanny caricature of Starsky will be wasted on the film's primary audience. These youngsters probably won't appreciate the lengths to which the film-makers have gone to replicate the series' cheesy-cool zooms and dodgy join-the-dots plotlines. Ripping off urban soul from the blaxploitation pix of the time and most of its buddy cop spiel from the likes of The French Connection, but watering them down for TV consumption, the series rarely strayed from clichés so egregious even neophytes will know them backwards. Stiller's exertions notwithstanding, this spoof is too amiable to cook up anything truly memorable, but fans of the odd-couple combo (Owen Wilson is the other half) will find plenty to amuse.