Hooch & Daddy-O (2005)

Director:

Donna Northcott

Writers:

Oscar Madrid (screenplay)
Oscar Madrid (story)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

The TV show you can't remember, the documentary you'll never forget.

Plot:

A documentary crew explores the pop culture impact of the 80's cop show "Hooch & Daddy-O" and what happens when the cast reunites to film a made for TV movie. |

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Chris Anich	...	Det. Jerome "Hooch" Hendrickson
Jim Ousley	...	Det. David "Daddy-O" Mandlebaum
Amy Elz	...	Darcy Rose (as Amy Marie Julia Elz)
Oscar Madrid	...	Ace Delvecchio
Rory Flynn	...	Capt. Harvey Grayson / Mr. Cross
Robert A. Mitchell	...	Squeegee / Tracy Guyer
Kevin Beyer	...	Johnson Davis
Scott Stallman	...	Ted Maynard
Julie Layton	...	Misty Whitley
Todd Gillenardo	...	Peter Linder
B. Weller	...	Barry Franklin
Isaiah DiLorenzo	...	Replacement Hooch
David Cooperstein	...	Officer Tate
Ambarish Manepalli	...	Miguel Fazio
Michael Bowdern	...	Officer Wilton

Runtime:

USA:74 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Company:

Crunchy Cool Films

Soundtrack:

I Wanna Be Like Hooch & Daddy-O

Baretta meets Starsky & Hutch meets TJ Hooker

Much of the movie takes place in the form of a series of flashbacks to Hooch & Daddy-O's happier heyday, back when the cast was part of the leading Friday night police drama of the 1980s, facing typical problems that many other police dramas had, including cast turnover and replacement of the star actor, including spinoffs in the form of Hooch & Daddy-O comic books and Saturday morning cartoons. Even after Hooch & Daddy-O was cancelled, tens of thousands of loyal fans wouldn't let them be forgotten. Similar to the Star Trek phenomenon of the 1960s, the Hooch & Daddy-O phenomenon lived on and on, relying on their loyal fans to keep the reruns running. Even after that died away, their fans invaded comic book conventions with Hooch & Daddy-O memorabilia, and if that weren't enough, they mounted a letter writing campaign to bring them all back, and they kept at it until the original cast finally was reunited. After 20 years, there would finally be a return to the limelight and the Big Screen.

One of the lead actors had fallen into hard times while another attempted to make ends meet with new age improv theater. Bitter personal conflicts of the past rose up once again as attempts were made to bury the proverbial hatchet, just for the making of the movie. One particularly funny episode among many involves one of the leading actors agreeing to be hypnotized so he could act better. Another leading actor has to call security to keep a fan from stalking him, even though she had his child eighteen years ago, and she still has the VHS - the sole evidence - of the night the baby was conceived. (That sounds kind of raunchy but it's more like R rated stuff than anything else.) Halfway into the movie we discover that Hooch (or was it Daddy-O) demanded too much money in the 1980s (a la Suzanne Somers in Threes Company) and was summarily fired and replaced with another actor that didn't even look like him! It's almost like firing Adam West from the Batman of the 1960s and replacing him with a 98 pound weakling because the "new" guy could remember his lines better! Even after the series ended in the 1980s, it lived on in the form of Saturday morning cartoons and comicbooks.

Then, once the cast was reunited, there were still problems, all ego related.

This is a very funny "mockumentary" about a long-running television series of the early 1980s, back when police shot first and asked questions later. Even if you weren't a Starsky & Hutch fan, and are too young to remember Baretta or TJ Hooker, this movie is still worth watching.