Associated Press

Real-life pals Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson have teamed up on half a dozen movies, Meet the Parents,‘Zoolander and The Royal Tenenbaums among them. Starsky & Hutch makes the most of the on-screen personalities each actor has cultivated: Stiller the tightly wound fanatic, Wilson the laid-back bad boy.

When the TV show premiered in 1975, curly-haired brunette Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and blond Hutch (David Soul) already were amigos, a team whose strengths and weaknesses nicely complemented each other. Set in the ‘70s, the movie version goes back to the beginning to show how Starsky and Hutch first partnered up and the growing pains as the salt-and-pepper pair struggled with their wildly different approaches to crime-fighting.

“We just kind of did it almost as if this was the original pilot of Starsky and Hutch, and then they ended up firing us and hiring Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul,” Stiller said alongside Wilson. “Two cooler guys. That was sort of the idea behind the tone of it.”

The movie aims for laughs, putting Starsky and Hutch through action-comedy paces as they are reluctantly hitched by their captain and set out to pursue a drug dealer peddling a dangerous new type of cocaine.

Stiller, 38, and Wilson, 35, grew up with Starsky and Hutch in the ‘70s. The son of actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Stiller recalls playing Starsky and Hutch on the streets of New York City. Wilson had a Starsky and Hutch lunchbox and the Hot Wheels Gran Torino as a boy in suburban Dallas.

The movie includes several nods to the original actors, including Wilson crooning “Don’t Give Up On Us”, Soul’s 1970s pop hit.

The two met when Stiller cast Wilson in his 1996 black comedy The Cable Guy which starred Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick. Stiller and Wilson first shared screen time with the 1998 comic drama Permanent Midnight, and Wilson played Stiller’s romantic foil in 2000’s Meet the Parents.

They were rival male models in the 2001 comedy Zoolander, which Stiller directed and co-wrote. Later that year, they co-starred in the ensemble family tale The Royal Tenenbaums, which earned Wilson and director Wes Anderson an Academy Award nomination for their screenplay.

There’s Something About Mary vaulted Stiller to stardom in 1998. Quickly following his current hit Along Came Polly, Stiller co-stars with Jack Black in Barry Levinson’s buddy comedy Envy, due out in April.

Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights paired Wilson with Jackie Chan as 19th century comic heroes. Wilson’s other credits include Behind Enemy Lines, Armageddon and the upcoming The Wendell Baker Story, which stars his brother Luke. The latter also is directed by Luke Wilson and another brother, Andrew.

Stiller said there’s a good chance Wilson will reprise his role in Meet the Fockers, the Meet the Parents sequel that begins shooting in April. The two have no fears they will suffer any Ben Affleck-Matt Damon-style backlash from too many on-screen collaborations.

“I don’t think we have to worry about that, because not enough people come to our movies to get burned out on us,” Stiller said. “We sort of look at ourselves as like Hope and Crosby without the success.”

“Without the huge following,” Wilson said. “Martin and Lewis without the, you know.”