‘CHIPS’ are way, way down in movie retread of TV show
“CHIPs” is a miserable movie, an exercise in stupidity that takes whatever nostalgia one had for the late-1970s television series – this assumes anyone actually had nostalgia for it — and beats it to death on a bed of idiocy.
The action scenes, though, are pretty well-directed.
So that’s something for Dax Shepard, who wrote and directed the film, stars in it and cast his wife, the usually delightful Kristen Bell, in it.
Alas, that also means we don’t have to look very hard for someone to blame.
That’s too bad. Shepard is an agreeable actor, adept at playing the charming doofus we like because we know he’s smarter than he seems. But he’s not helping his case with this movie.
Shepard plays Jon Baker, a down-
and-out former X-Gamestype motorcycle racer, whose despicable wife (Bell) is teaching “swimming lessons” to a neighbor and doesn’t seem to care much for Jon now that he’s no longer racing. He sees joining the California Highway Patrol as one last shot at improving his life and marriage.
The only problem: He fails every test there is to fail, except, of course, the motorcycle-riding one. But a somewhat sympathetic, somewhat crazy sergeant (Maya Rudolph, at the top of the what-arethey-doing-here list) gives him a shot. He can partner with Frank “Ponch” Poncherello (Michael Peña) on a probationary basis.
But there’s a catch: Unbeknownst to the sergeant, Ponch isn’t really part of the force. He’s an undercover FBI agent looking for a crooked patrolman who may be playing a part in a string of daring armored-car robberies. You will suspect Vincent D’Onofrio’s character, mostly because they reveal that part of the story early on. The real fun is in following Jon and Ponch as they try to gather enough evidence to arrest him and…
Sorry. Did I say fun? No, this isn’t fun at all, unless you like your plots full of holes (Adam Brody shows up from time to time as an agent competing with Ponch, then disappears), your stories predictable and your dirty jokes juvenile. (And I do! Just not ... Every. Five. Seconds.) You will learn, among other things, that Ponch is a sex addict who must, um, relieve himself often, and hear more than you want to know about the sex act popular among all the cool people these days.
Or so Ponch keeps telling us. (And telling us.)
Credit where it’s due: Shepard has a clear love of anything with an engine in it, and it shows. His chase scenes are exciting and innovative. On the down side, the cars, trucks, motorcycles and helicopters show more character development than the humans who operate them.
There is an inevitable cameo, but even that is sullied by the lazy, profane storytelling. At least “CHIPS” is innovative in one way: Shepard reminds us that this is not one of those remakes anyone was hungry for, but does so in new and different ways.