Starsky and Hutch

I'm all achey and bruised because I got the shit beat out of me this week. I sort of expect it because getting beat up is the luxury tax you pay for having a big mouth and being stupid. And you know what? I'd rather pay the tax every once in a while than have to keep my mouth shut when I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. The difference this time--and the only reason I'm telling you about this and never mentioned the time those Boy Scouts threw me down the skate ramp--is that it was a priest who kicked my ass.

That's embarrassing, I guess, taking it on the chin rom some guy who calls himself Monsignor and keeps getting his fists tangled in his vespers. Everyone thinks those priests are pussies, and too drunk to be good fighters. I know I wouldn't have kept telling him to go have another loaf of Jesus if I knew his hunch-backed, 70-something year-old body could pack such a wallop. Or that he bit.

I should be ashamed, but I'm not really, because I got a priest pissed enough to take the first swing. And I'll take all the abuse my body can handle if it knocks some pacifist off his hoity-toity pedestal. "Look at me, I think I'm great because I don't like violence. Look at all the pussy I get. Look at how the girls aren't nearly as scared of me as they are of you." It basically proved what I suspected all along: that nobody's really a pacifist when faced by extreme assholeishness. Trust me; throw bricks at some hippies van. Fucking hypocrites.

This brawl was about a parking spot, which you might think sounds petty. That's because you don't know what else I've had my ass kicked over. Some examples: repeatedly telling a man that his wife was as ugly than a baboon ass (I was so sure I was right I would have let him kick my teeth in, except now I can't remember why he needed to know this); Miller Lite is less filling; cat milk tastes sour; I can too dance like a robot. I spotted the parking spot first, and Father Harris tried to cut me off. Normally I don't give a shit about good parking spots. Especially since I don't have a car. As soon as I got into the space, Father Harris started pestering me, asking if I were going to stand there. Yes, I was. He asked if he could park there. When my invisible car is gone you can, and as you can't see, it's not. He asked please and then the petty name-calling and childish insults started. Monsignor got sick of me doing that pretty quick, and that's when the holy roller started swinging.

This story is directly relevant to my review this week. Not that it matters. The only people who seem to get their panties stuck up their craws when I tell a story are the people who think I'm a real critic. That's their mistake. The point being my ribs had more bruises than a kid in New Jersey foster care. I felt like I'd rip in half if I laughed. So, thank God the grassfuckers behind Starsky and Hutch were thoughtful enough to leave the laughs out of their crappy, unnecessary and unoriginal 70s spoof.

Holy shit, who thinks making fun of the 70s is still funny? Maybe people who watch a lot of VH1, but they don't count because they are mostly retarded, shut-ins and the same people who bring crumb cakes to work. Starsky and Hutch is one of a long string of really shitty comedies whose whole point is to show us exaggerated styles from the 70s and say, "Huh huh, isn't that funny?" No, you fucking assholes, it's not. Not if you can't add anything to it. If looking at outdated afros and macrame were funny, I would dig down to the bottom of the pile of magazines at the Arvada Barbers and get my giggles for free. What's funny is going beyond putting wide lapels and disco dancing on the screen and making a fucking joke. I mean, if I thought it were funny just pointing out someone's weaknesses, I'd crap my pants while laughing every time someone told me I'd crapped my pants while drunk.

Starsky and Hutch is the latest stream of shit out of the horse's ass called Hollywood. It's the laziest kind of turd this thoroughbred manufactures: the spoof of a 70s TV Show: like Charlie's Angels and the godawful I Spy. So lazy that while it mocks its origins, it cant seem to come up with anything better. I'm sure Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Riderand Magnum PI aren't too far behind. And every fucking one of them will be a spoof, because some band of insecure titsuckers out west thinks it makes them cool when they make fun of shit. My question is this: if Hollywood can't do anything but barf up its recent past now, what the hell will they be doing in 30 years? Making fun of how much Hollywood made fun of the 70s back in the 2000s? At least the Starsky and Hutch TV show wasn't just a bad spoof of a 1940s TV show.

There's a nominal plot about Ben Stiller (Starsky) and Owen Wilson (Hutch) as two San Francisco cops who break up a drug ring. Wilson is the easygoing, amoral one, and Stiller is the uptight, by-the-book one. Never mind that this has nothing to do with the old TV show. The title is just an excuse to make a bad movie that pretends to be a spoof when it's just a rehash of the most formulaic horseshit imaginable. The two disparate officers are supposed to clash, but don't very much. Their exasperated police captain takes their badges, yells at them and all the other standard issue shit. I think this is supposed to be funny, but there ain't no jokes. Just a screaming captain. Here's what fucking pisses me off: you can't make fun of the odd-couple cop formula, or the angry police captain cliche if you're so fucking lazy that you use them to move your story forward. That'd be like me laughing in my mom's face when she loans me fifty bucks. And I always wait until I'm outside to do that.

Stiller and Wilson drop their distinct personalities halfway through the movie because it gets too bothersome to keep track of for screenwriters more interested in the comic possibilities of leisure suits and disco dance-offs. The plot is tedious and overlong, full of scenes you've seen a million times before. But see, they're supposed to be funny for exactly that reason: we've seen them before, but now with even more polyester! There are lots of low-grade cameos that appeal to assholes who watch too much basic cable television. There's even a bad "cops love donuts" joke. How fucking lazy do you have to be to make one of those?

There are about four scenes in this movie that save it from being pure crap: Will Ferrell does a cameo as a dragon-obsessed informant and there are two scenes where Stiller and Wilson go undercover. Okay, fuck it, there are only three scenes. But what's funny about these scenes has absolutely nothing to do with the 70s or making fun of disco. They also have little to do with the rest of the movie.

What is funny is nearly negated by the most depressing ending in recent memory. The stars of the original television series make an appearance at the end of the movie in what could set a landspeed record for insincere sappiness. Like Hollywood gives a fuck how the stars of the original show feel about a shitty spoof of them, or that the target audience of pimple, indiscriminate teens would ever recognize them. Still, for some reason, Paul Michael Glaser (the original Starsky) and David Soul (the original Hutch) chose to humiliate themselves by hitching a ride through the sewers on this crap.

It's a fucking shame is what it is. Why the stars of a mediocre show would choose to bless an even crappier movie with their presence is a mystery. Maybe it had something to do with money. Two Fingers for Starsky and Hutch. Thank God my ribs can heal without disruption.