Okay, maybe the Coen Brothers. They're the only guys who seem to half-get this type of thing, although their material tends to be a bit more pot-heady than Stiller and Wilson's. When they feel like going there, the Coens can bust your gut. The death-of-Wheezy-Joe scene in INTOLERABLE CRUELTY is the most brilliantly rendered piece of fall-down slapstick performed in the 21st Century.

There are no scenes in STARSKY AND HUTCH (Warner Bros., opening Friday) that ever approach the W.J. scene. It isn't a great or even a very good comedy, frankly. But it's got an oddly relaxing, intuitive put-on vibe that's truly disarming, and is resultantly worth its weight in gold. All right, silver.

If I were going to direct or produce a not-that-great comedy, I'd like to be good enough to make something like this.

I don't know if this is coming out right. I'm saying S & H isn't classic, but what Stiller, Wilson and director Todd Phillips try for and, more often than not, achieve makes up for the stuff that doesn't quite get there. Maybe part of it is that I'm susceptible to Phillips. It surprised the shit out of me when I discovered that I liked ROAD TRIP, which he directed, a few years back. Jeez, I guess I'll finally have to watch OLD SCHOOL now.

You've seen the trailers for S & H and know it's a spoof-the-'70s comedy. And you know it's got the souped-up, cherry-red Gran Torino...that counts for a lot with me...and some very pretty babes with great-looking navels, and what looks like TV-show lighting.

Things start off with the humorless, hard-case, pissed-off Dave Starsky (Stiller) getting teamed with the laid-back, hedonistic, go-with-it Ken Hutchison (Wilson), and yaddah-yaddah.

There's a nothing, goof-off plot that serves as an excuse to do funny shit. They've got a friend called Huggy Bear (Snoop Dog) with a pet iguana, and a precinct honcho played by a bellicose Fred Wiliamson. The bad guy they're after is a moustachioed drug dealer (Vince Vaughan) who's come up with something called "New Coke" -- i.e. cocaine that doesn't smell like cocaine, and tastes like artificial sweetener.

Here I am making this sound like throwaway crap, and it's really not.

A lot of the jokes are about lampooning '70s hairstyles, pop tunes (there's a scene in which Wilson picks up a guitar and sings, with a semblance of sincerity, "Don't Give Up On Us, Baby," the song that the original "Hutch," David Soul, sang and made into a hit in '76 or thereabouts), clothes and dance steps.

The gay-humor element is the funniest thing about it. Phillips has called S & H "a romantic comedy between two straight men"...but the more you think about it, the more you realize that's not precisely it. The template here is actually Redford and Newman in the '70s, only a bit more daring and self-mocking, with a lot more sexual irreverence.

If you watched the Oscar show last Sunday night, you know these guys and their basic fucking-with-each-other's-heads number. Most of the fun of this film comes from their giving off a relaxed, unforced vibe. It's easy to coast along on the simple fact that they genuinely like each other.

There's a routine that includes Will Ferrell involving simulated gay lizard sex in a prison that's probably the funniest thing in the film. The second biggest laugh is a car-driving-off-a-pier gag, which I don't want to spoil.

And I was happy to see Stiller revive his "No No No guy" routine, which I got into again after watching the two-disc BEN STILLER SHOW compilation DVD, which came out a couple of months ago. (Seen it?)

The accidental shooting death of a harmless four-legged animal....funny! All right, it's not exactly a knee-slapper when it happens, but the lead-up to the killing is so foolish and dumb-ass, and the reasons why it happens are so bone-headed, that it almost does the trick. And that's saying something.

More than any other comic duo around these days (and who would that be, by the way? ....Beevis and Butthead?), Stiller and Wilson are living in their own planetary system, and I have this feeling that no one's quite getting how subversively special they really are...even when some of their material doesn't fly, which happens from time to time.

You'll notice I said "their" material, even if the story is credited to Steve Long and John O'Brien, and the screenplay to O'Brien, Scot Armstrong, and Phillips.

Every comic bit in S & H avoids any kind of broad delivery (no vomit or bowel-relieving or dick jokes) and is wittily peculiar. When it's not firing on all six cylinders, it's at least agreeably diverting. The best sections aren't plot- or gag-based, but about personality. And if that isn't the Stiller and Wilson stamp, I don't know what is.

The Soft Parade

I feel like a fool who's been on a fool's errand. Writing about the Oscar race is what I do for a good part of the year, and for what? The moment finally arrives, the curtain goes up, and what the world watches on its TV screens is, for the most part, a letdown.

Some good moments transpired, okay, but for the most part Sunday night's Oscar show was a lackluster thing, and groaningly predictable. Sweeps are always portraits of voter sloth -- i.e., a general unwillingness to really sift through and ponder the specific merits of each contender -- and sweeps won by films that aren't very extraordinary or startling to begin with can feel like a form of suffocation.

Last year's saving grace came when the loathed and dreaded CHICAGO was kept from a sweep by the PIANIST wins for director Roman Polanski, lead actor Adrien Brody and screenwriter Ronald Harwood.

This year's RETURN OF THE KING sweep produced precisely the opposite affect. It felt like a huge pre-arranged fix. Watching the Jackson brigade ascend the stage stairs again and again and listen to them thank their New Zealand brethren for this and that had the effect of an intravenous sedative.

For some reason an analogy popped into my head about sitting in a city council meeting in Chicago of 1960 and watching flunkies for Mayor Richard Daley hand out construction and waste-management contracts.

"You're Boring," that satire song sung by Jack Black and Will Ferrell, was about endless "thank you" speeches, but it struck a more general chord.

I'm sure that the reason Billy Crystal made two jokes about the RINGS procession ("It's now official -- there's nobody left in New Zealand to thank," and "Did you know people are moving to New Zealand, just to be thanked?")...I'm sure he and his writers came up with these jokes because they sensed people were totally delighted by the KING sweep and would greet any jokes about it with muted hostility.

Why did everyone laugh when the blonde, middle-aged producer of THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS said, "We're so thankful that LORD OF THE RINGS did not qualify in this category"? Why did MASTER AND COMMANDER cinematographer Russell Boyd say upon accepting his Oscar, "I have an Australian accent..."?

Allow me to be rude once more and say what everyone knows but doesn't want to go public with: if Sofia Coppola's last name had been Lucchese or Salvatore, LOST IN TRANSLATION -- a completely decent little film, but a long way from the Holy Grail -- would probably have never been financed, much less nominated as a candidate for Best Original Screenplay.

Thank heavens for the Sean Penn surprise. The Best Actor Oscar win for his MYSTIC RIVER performance was the evening's only serious "whoa" because he was seen by a fair number of handicappers as a likely loser to Bill Murray.

I say this as a faithless supporter who pushed for Penn early on, only to gradually fall by the wayside. This was partly due to my buying into the hype about the Murray surge, which was attributed to his showing up and being funny at the Golden Globes. My drifting off was also due to my personal admiration of Murray's other, much better performances in other films over the last ten or so years. And because of the "Johnny Depp surprise" talk that started up last week over his win at the SAG Awards.

But whatever: Penn earned it, and became the only winner of the night to get a standing ovation. And good for his having the moxie to say, "If there's one thing that actors know, other than that there were no WMD's..."

The wins by Penn and MYSTIC RIVER's Tim Robbins, who took a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, amounted to a Clint Eastwood tribute, since performances guided by his direction of MYSTIC RIVER had scooped up half of the acting honors.

And hooray for Charlize Theron, whom everyone knew was going to win the Best Actress Oscar for her acting in MONSTER, but who nonetheless gave the night's most heartfelt acceptance speech.

I don't even mind all that much that she thanked her attorney (it was a human enough thing to say), especially considering that the show's producer, Joe Roth, had signaled to everyone at the Academy nominees lunch that it would be okay to run off at the mouth if you were important enough.

And hooray for THE FOG OF WAR's Errol Morris, even if he didn't hit the traditionally desired note of gracious gratitude upon winning the Best Feature Documentary Oscar.

In thanking voters for "honoring my films...I thought it would never happen," Morris conveyed that he felt the award was his due, and an overdue one at that. He happens to be right in feeling this way (the Academy has treated him horribly for a long time, ignoring the generally-accepted view that Morris is to the documentary community as Frank Lloyd Wright was to 20th Century architects), but it's usually a good idea not to allude to past frustrations.

Oprah Winfrey was invited to introduce the montage from MYSTIC RIVER because...? Because she's chummy with Joe Roth, I take it. I'm asking because it felt weird.

That really was Blake Edwards speeding across the stage in the wheelchair and crashing through a fake wall...right? Or was it some stunt guy who only looked liked Edwards?? (He's 81, you know.) Anyway, it was a good bit. It happened at the 70-minute mark in the Oscar awards show, and was the only surprising or semi-arresting occurrence up to that point.

The first hour was total limpitude. Tim Robbins' message to victims of sexual abuse -- don't feel ashamed, get help, stop the cycle - was moving and well said, but for a good hour or so after that....c'mon! THE RETURN OF THE KING, Renee Zellweger, THE RETURN OF THE KING, THE RETURN OF THE KING, FINDING NEMO (another slam-dunker), THE RETURN OF THE KING.

Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson were pretty funny. (They did two bits -- one on the red carpet before the show, and the second on-stage.) However successful STARSKY AND HUTCH may be (I haven't seen it yet) they've got a really great routine going: Wilson the breezily entitled wise-ass WASP who takes everything in stride, and Stiller the uptight, under-appreciated, pissed-off Jew....whom Wilson relentlessly and good-naturedly teases. These guys are the Abbott and Costello (Laurel and Hardy?) of our times.

Maryann DeLeo, whose CHERNOBYL HEART won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short, went on too long in her acceptance speech. Blame Joe Roth if you want, but I sense she's a drama queen on some level. I muttered to the TV screen as I listened to Leo thank her mother and father and whomever, "Uhhm...sweetheart? Julia Roberts is in the audience."

Is John Travolta wearing a new rug these days? His hairline looks lower and fuller than it used to.

Annie Lennox said she was "stunned" when she, Howard Shore and Fran Walsh won the award for Best Song for "Into the West," which at that particular moment was the eighth Oscar bagged for THE RETURN OF THE KING. (It won 11 overall.) She was the only one in the entire world who had this reaction.

Susan Sarandon wore the best boob-baring gown of the evening, in my opinion. Jamie Lee Curtis was a close second.

I got a good laugh out of Robin Williams and Billy Crystal's ventriloquist skit, and, later on, Crystal's Williams impression. Crystal's opening movie montage and his ten-minute musical number were both pretty good. But all that CG stuff he does (i.e. putting himself into footage from nominated films) is starting to lose its sparkle. It was terrific when he did the same routine four or five years ago, when it was a newer phenomenon.

The bit when Michael Moore was stomped on by a CG super-elephant from RETURN OF THE KING (an allusion to his having mouthed off against Bush during last year's Oscars) was funny, and an indication that Moore can be a good sport.

Bill Murray is an amazing real-life actor and communicator in that anything he happens to be feeling can always be read with unmistakable clarity.

Did everyone notice how unsatisfied he seemed to be about that clip they showed from LOST IN TRANSLATION, in which his TV actor character is having his photo taken by those Japanese guys? The cameras didn't catch his reaction to Sean Penn's win, but it must have been a doozy because it inspired Billy Crystal to say to Murray in front of the world, "Bill...don't leave! Don't leave! We love you!"

If The Spirit Moves...

Cheers to everyone who won an IFP Spirit Award last Saturday afternoon. And that applies -- yes, I mean this -- to LOST IN TRANSLATION, which nabbed three awards -- Best Feature, Best Original Screenplay (written by director Sofia Coppola), and Best Actor (Bill Murray). And to Errol Morris and THE FOG OF WAR, which was honored as Best Documentary. And 21 GRAMS, which was given a Special Distinction Award.

The show was shown live on the IFC Channel, and then re-broadcast two or three times over the next 36 hours. It was briskly paced, entertaining, well-produced, funny (those follow-the-bouncing-ball songs) and so on. The show is a cash cow for the Independent Feature Project, and that's good because they're tireless supporters of the independent film cause.

And yet...

Each year, the IFP Spirit Awards seems a little bit less the "anti-Oscars" (as Roger Ebert again described them a couple of days ago) and a little more the "almost Oscars." Not in terms of their mission, but their backstage personality.

I'm speaking from my perspective as a journalist who's been attending and covering the Spirits since the early '90s. They used to be a friendly, we're-all-in-this-together affair in which press people were treated like family, or at least like good neighbors. And why not? Critics and frontline feature writers have done plenty over the years to get the word out about deserving indie films...right?

But starting in the mid '90s the Spirit Awards became more and more popular, which led to corporate sponsors moving in and buying up all the tables, and the press being treated more like...well, invitees. Security guys in dark suits became more and more of a fixture, and press people were restricted during the show to hanging around behind the tent and interviewing award-winners in the press tent for quotes.

I initially felt slighted about not being able to sit with the talent, okay, and then slighted again a couple of years later after being told that schmoozing with talent inside the tent before the show was also a lost privelege. And yes, I protested this for a year or two by not attending. But I let it go last year and started attending again...what the hell.

And then, two days ago....more indignities. I was given the usual parking pass, which had always allowed me to park gratis in the general vicinity of the tent, but signs led me Saturday to a parking area about a half mile away...and I had to pay six bucks. Then I learned the press area had been restricted to two small tents -- no hanging around the back-of-the-tent area any longer, and several more goons in dark suits lurking around.

The free grub was great (thanks, IFP!), but there was no regular coffee -- only decaf. You couldn't hear the TV in the tent where the food was being served. Then a new press-tent rule was announced -- journos would be permitted to ask award-winners questions for only four minutes. (Last year and in years past the questions went on....much longer!)

I know I sound like a whiner. The MPRM publicists backstage told me, "Jeff, you're the only one who's complaining." And I know, of course, that if there are fewer and fewer apples in the bowl as the years pass, the polite guest isn't supposed to say, "Hey...fewer apples!" He's supposed to say, "Wow, they're still nice and round...and no worms!"

I'm not sure I'm the only complainer. Upon accepting his Best Actor award, Bill Murray made a crack about the mentality of some of the Spirit Award winners, or perhaps about the community in general. "Gettin' like this," he said, indicating swelled heads. "Real big shot...not independent at all!" And he got a big laugh.

More praise is due for the way Murray handled himself at his Spirit Award press session when a dopey question was asked.

A woman who always asks insultingly silly things of actors and brings down the level of intelligence in the questioning asked him how excited he was, what he'd be wearing, and how he was preparing for Sunday night. Murray rolled his eyes, smirked, and said to the group, "Does anyone have any questions?"

I was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him, and asked at one point if he could say anything about his upcoming Wes Anderson film, THE LIFE AQUATIC. He called Anderson a really special filmmaker and said that the movie is "going to blow everyone away."

To compete at the Spirit Awards, your film has to have cost less than $12 million dollars. 21 GRAMS cost more than this, but it was such a great indie-style arthouse film that it was honored anyway with a Special Distinction award. Tom McCarthy's THE STATION AGENT was honored with the org's Cassevettes Award, which is given to the best film shot for under $500,000.

Oscar Reactions

"LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING -- 11. Jeffrey Wells -- 0. Choke on it." -- Jay Marks

"Now that RETURN OF THE KING has taken home all its awards, you can look at the bright side, Jeff. You will no longer have to obsess over any of those movies any more when it comes to handicapping Oscar races or box-office grosses. It's all behind you now, with a clear and empty playing field. " -- Drew Kerr

"The show was incredibly boring. I'm sure Catherine Zeta Jones was snoring. The fun part about last year was watching with the expectation of CHICAGO sweeping, but then seeing Ronald Harwood walk on stage followed later by Harrison Ford giving it to Roman Polanski for Best Director. Even though CHICAGO took home Best Picture at the end, the Academy still allowed me to have my fun before then.

"This time, there really was no fun to be had. I guess I found some enjoyment in people poking fun at the coronation ("We're just glad the LOTR doesn't count in this category"), and a grin came to my face when father and daughter walked on stage to present Best Adapted Screenplay, but this was truly a by-the-numbers Oscars.

"Were there any upsets? What do you think was going through Clint's mind when he realized we were on a march to an 11/11 winning streak for a movie he has openly campaigned against?" -- Adam Weisz.

Wells to Weisz: I'm sure Clint was happy about Penn and Robbins, and that he let it go at that.

Noted

"Please let it be noted that in the big six categories -- Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress -- every Oscar winner was first a Critics' Choice Award winner on January 10th. And that unlike the Golden Globes, the Critics' Choice Awards don't have Drama and Comedy categories." -- Joey Berlin, Broadcast Film Critics Association.