Rating: 4 out of 5 – Go to see once at the movies – no need to buy the DVD
Fun movie. Excellent homage to the 1970’s – lots of fun. Three scenes were a bit racy – but my 13 year old handled them fine. One of the racy scene’s (with the cheerleader chainging clothes) was almost as good as Mike Myers – and the fact that two actors were playing off one another – it was fun to watch – I would have improved on by having them gain and lose focus more rather than just spending all of the scene in a dazed state. The actor who played the cheerleader was excellent in her pacing and completely deadpan – which made the scene very funy – “what do you say to a naked lady?”.
Ben Stiller is a heck of an actor – the scenes where he mistakenly ends up on coke are pretty intense and well done.
The bad-guy is pretty well played – just bad enough to be believable and yet funny too.
Editing is excellent – pacing is good.
In a way, there were elements of a movie shot in a 70’s style and that was fun as well. It is actually more fun to watch it sort-of like 70’s style rather than actual 70’s movies.
The only strangeness in terms of quality is in the last big car scene where they go flying off a pier. For the in-car cut aways, the lighting was really bad – clearly all in-studio work. It almost looked like they had either switched to 35mm film (grain was very obvious) or they used an SFX house which did not keep the quality high enough or added too much fake grain. But the thing that absolutely bugged me the most was the lame lighting – this is so lame becuase it is one thing that folks *know* how to do – duh. I always wonder if there is a story behind this – like they ran out of time or something.
If I were to comment on the writing – the only thing (and it was a small thing) that bugged me was how they portrayed Hutch as doing illegal stuff at the beginning – like he was a bad cop. I think that they could have established that he was a maverick who treaded in grey areas without going quite so far.
All in all, a fine film to watch.