‘CHiPS’ reboot a fun ride
OK, the world may not have been waiting for another reboot of a 40-yearold TV series.
Yet Dax Shepard’s “CHiPS” is surprisingly personal for what are often merely crass efforts at nostalgic exploitation.
A lighthearted, actionpacked farce about a California Highway Patrol squad, this “CHiPS” jokes, mocks and surveys male bonding, homophobia, aging, bad art, sex addiction and self-worth.
That only sounds heavy, for Shepard’s semideranged imagination never strays too far from the absurdly true, yet ridiculous situations in which people find themselves.
This “CHiPS” pivots on the oddball pairing of Michael Pena’s Frank Poncherello and Shepard’s Jon Baker.
Ponch, an inveterate skirt-chaser uncomfortable with male intimacy, is an FBI detective from Miami, where he shot his partner (Adam Brody). Accidentally, he insists.
Undercover in L.A. to investigate what looks like an inside job at the Highway Patrol, Ponch is not — and seemingly never will be — ready for the California touchy-feely philosophizing of his new partner.
That would be Baker, an ex-pro motorbiker who’s taken way too many hits: There’s titanium instead of a bone in an upper arm, pathetically inept knees, multiple scars and he pops pain pills like they’re M&Ms.
Highway Patrol for this wannabe serves as therapy for a yearlong depression prompted by his derailed motorcycling daredevil career and a split from his wife (real-life spouse Kristen Bell), now a “swim instructor” having a fling with a hunk.
Baker’s lamentable tryout proves he has absolutely no ability to shoot straight, but he’s miraculously rescued by Maya Rudolph’s sergeant.
In a sublimely funny performance review, the sergeant is so moved by comparing their various romantic miseries she gives this bumbler a probation period to prove himself.
As “CHiPS” rides along, mostly on two wheels, to solve a series of heists, Vincent D’Onofrio’s presence is clue enough that bad cops are part of the mix.
Never cynical, oldfashioned in its reverence for stuntmen doing stunts and not a digital effects machine, “CHiPS” takes the high road. In a low-life kind of silly way, the real laughs come from oversized personality clashes, hysterically pitched fights and a general awakening between our two misfits that they like each other.
(“CHiPS” has sexual situations, brief frontal nudity, adult language and violent deaths.)