Funny ‘CHIPS’ is not off the old block
The raunchy bromantic comedy “CHIPS,” with Dax Shepard and Michael Pena, can’t help but raise fundamental questions: What is its purpose? Could it have value as a franchise?
But the biggest question remains the one that went off like a lightbulb in my head after seeing that first trailer: Will today’s audiences even bother to go see an overhaul of a not-so-hot late ’70s-early ’80s TV series relic?
The answer is, maybe, and that’s due to screenwriter, director and funnyman star Shepard’s insistence on irreverence and his refusal to kowtow to the source material. Devotees of the series created by Rick Rosner might not be happy with this loose approach, since even the personalities of main characters Frank “Ponch” Poncherello (Pena of “End of Watch”) and Jon Baker (Shepard) bear little similarity to their TV counterparts, who were portrayed by Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox. Here, Ponch is a sex-addicted undercover agent from Miami who is muscling his way into the Los Angeles CHP, while Jon is a pill-popping new recruit with a body broken down by riding motorbikes and an unhealthy need to please his cheating wife (played with punch by Shepard’s real-life wife Kristen Bell). My, how times have changed.
The plot is an absurdity, having something to do with rogue CHP officers committing crimes for personal goals. It is really no plot at all, merely a vehicle to allow Shepard and Pena to riff about kinky bedroom habits, homophobia and so on. Those flippant exchanges fluctuate from funny to flat.
It does have one thing going for it, though — the chemistry between Shepard and Pena. While “CHIPS” is neither as inventive nor as funny as the livelier bigscreen Channing TatumJonah Hill “21 Jump Street” redo, it is better than you’d expect, stuffed with just enough outrageous laughs to make you sometimes happy to ride along. But only at a matinee price.