Those still recovering from other Seventies show remakes such as the feeble Charlie's Angels and The Saint need have no sense of foreboding about this.

Director Todd Phillips' take on the cop show trash classic turbocharges along as smoothly as a scarlet Ford Gran Torino with white racing stripes.

Ben Stiller is David Starsky, a dedicated undercover cop who's never off-duty but living under the shadow of his mom - "one of the finest cops on the force".

Villains incurring his displeasure do so at their peril - his mantra is "If you cross the line your nuts are mine."

On the other hand, laidback Ken "Hutch" Hutchinson (Wilson) is happy to cross that line if he thinks it might lead to an arrest.

Fed up with their unpalatable personality traits, Bay City police chief Captain Dobey (Fred Williamson) thinks the solution is to pair them up.

Phillips, whose previous outings included Road Trip and Old School, really hits his stride with this tightly directed comic caper.

Together with screenwriters John O'Brien and Scot Armstrong, he's knitted together a script that fits as snugly as one of Starksy's cream and brown chunky-knit cardies.

The period is perfectly captured with towelling headbands, headphones the size of dustbins and piles of cardboard boxes waiting to be rammed in back alleys by the duo's Ford GT.

The only thing missing from the original are a pair of lesbian cheerleaders (Carmen Electra and Amy Smart) but sexual politics weren't what they are now.

Sapphic considerations and man-mad fibres apart, the real star here is Stiller in his best performance since Meet The Parents.

His portrayal of Starsky as played by Paul Michael Glaser is just slightly enough off-kilter to make it truly surreal.

Clearly relishing the role, he throws in every comic tic, nuance and bug-eyed stare in his repertoire climaxing in a cocaine-fuelled disco waddle at a dancing competition.

Wilson generously allows him centre-stage but offers up a complementary chilled-out foil while Vaughn is on good form as a drugs baron.

What shines through is the affection obviously felt for the original (David Soul and Michael Glaser turn in an unsurprising cameo).

It's so good you'll want to needlessly throw yourself off a chain link fence onto the bonnet of your car.

Tim Evans