Starsky & Hutch (PG-13) ****

They were television's original "buddy" cops. Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul in many ways pioneered the road that Mel Gibson and Danny Glover would traverse on the silver screen. And "Starsky & Hutch," like many of the other programs on the television landscape in 1975, was oh, so seventies!

Ben Stiller assumes the role of Dave Starsky, a cop that would chase a perp across seven city blocks, regardless of personal property damage and innocent civilians in the way. The perp, by the way, can be a drug dealer, or a litterbug. To Starsky, this doesn't matter. Mom, you see, God rest her soul, was the best cop the department ever knew.

Meanwhile, Ken Hutchison (Owen Wilson) is an undercover cop who is no stranger to rulebending. He'll latch on to a local gang and rob a few booking houses without ever filing a report or turning over any money -- until, of course, he's inevitably caught red-handed.

Another mainstay of the genre is the African-American commanding officer, with a blood pressure reading to match his social security number. Bay City's C.O. is Captain Doby (Fred Williamson), and he decides early on in the film, that Starsky & Hutch deserve each other. The two mavericks are assigned to stop a cocaine cartel (Vince Vaughn and Jason Bateman), which has devised a drug that acts like coke, but is invisible to drug-sniffing dogs and conventional analysis.

I never saw a single episode of "Starsky & Hutch" in the seventies, and this movie does nothing to make me want to remedy this intentional oversight. I had friends that were fond of the show, but I recollect it as being incredibly noisy, running over with car chases and that pseudo-psychedelic 70s music. Director Todd Phillips is evidently a child of the 70s, and he affectionately uses "Starsky & Hutch" as a vehicle to transport his audience back to the "me" decade. Every soundtrack choice makes us giggle a bit, and the clothing just makes us want to run screaming from the theater ... with laughter, that is. And even down to Bateman's drug-dealer moustache, the detail is correct down to the last wide lapel.

Adding support to the cast is Carmen Electra and Amy Smart as marginal romantic interests and Will Ferrell in a cameo as an imprisoned biker bar owner who's a bit too uncomfortably interested in our lad Hutch. And Snoop Dogg makes a fun "Huggy Bear," Hutch's favorite underworld contact.

The original articles, Glaser and Soul, turn up for an inspired epilogue as well, leaving the door open for "S&H 2."

The story is painfully slight, and some of the action sequences drag a bit, but there are a lot of loud belly laughs in this film. Perhaps not since the first "Brady Bunch" movie was the decade mined so successfully for its self indulgence and brazen gaudiness. And I won't spoil for you Owen Wilson's rendition of "Don't Give Up On Us, Baby," or the action sequence at the end that provides an unexpected knee-slapper, rather than the standard "hero-saves-the-day" stunt.

It took me some time after my review of "The Passion of the Christ" to make my way back to the movie theater. But "Starsky & Hutch" felt good. Really good.