15 years from now there'll be another remake starring Haley Joel Osment and Frankie Muniz*, and all four of these guys will cameo. (*Who will play whom? Discuss.)

With Starsky and Hutch , Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson do their part for Hollywood's ongoing effort to recycle each and every 1970s TV show that has even a shred of nostalgia attached to it. Fortunately this time around the movie's played for laughs, and - surprisingly, since it comes from the brain trust that brought us Old School - actually manages to get quite a few.

For the uninitiated, "Starsky and Hutch" was a buddy-cop show, heavy on violence, light on quality. The heart-throbby pair had a red sports car, handy for chase scenes, a pimp/informant named Huggy Bear, and an unlimited ammo budget. The movie version tailors the characters to play to the strengths of its leads: Stiller's Dave Starsky is a variation on his uptight, nose-to-the-grindstone theme, while Wilson's Ken Hutchinson is the same wry, amoral-with-a-core-of-decency character he's played in movies like Shanghai Noon and The Big Bounce .

Reluctantly partnered up by their captain, the mismatched duo find themselves on a murder investigation that leads them to not-so-upstanding businessman Reese Feldman, a man whose charitable works provide cover for his plan to market a new, undetectable cocaine, and why am I telling you about the plot? Does it matter to you? It shouldn't. This movie is all about the gags, which range from the broad to the slightly less broad but still manage to connect more often than not.

The only way this is cool is if those are full of beer.

Director/co-writer Todd Phillips takes a scattershot approach to the satire, sometimes mocking the tropes and traditions of TV cop shows in general, sometimes of "Starsky and Hutch" in particular, and sometimes just throwing in whatever he thinks will strike us as funny. A particular favorite of mine is the ultimate-in-cool Huggy Bear (Snoop Dogg), who can be counted on to know everything from the defense mechanisms of the iguana to who embroidered the dragon on a thug's jacket. Will Ferrell, who can be overbearing in large quantities, has just enough screen time here as a jailhouse snitch who's looking for a payoff that doesn't involve cash.

As for the two leads, they're doing exactly what we've seen them do in plenty of movies before this. Too many movies? Maybe. Stiller's neurotic and Wilson's laid-back slacker are wearing a little thin, and have been better used in service of sharper scripts (The Royal Tenenbaums springs to mind) but I laughed enough to give them this one. After all, Wilson went to all the trouble of learning "Don't Give Up on Us Baby." That's got to count for something.

Gorilla Pants rating: 2.5 out of 4 bananas