CHIPS

Starring: Michael Pena, Dax Shepard, Vincent D'Onofrio, Rosa Salazar, Jessica McNamee, Adam Brody, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Richard T. Jones, David Koechner, Ed Begley Jr., Kristen Bell, Ben Falcone, Mae Whitman, Josh Duhamel (uncredited), Erik Estrada (uncredited), Maya Rudolph (uncredited)
Directed by: Dax Shepard
Rating: R
Genre: Action, Comedy
2017

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Two members (Michael Pena, Dax Shepard) of the California Highway Patrol investigate crooked cops.

Review:

Tim: Did we really need an R rated reboot of "CHiPs"? I would say probably not. And, as you might expect from Dax Shepard the director, the film is pretty stupid. And yet, here's the thing- it's not nearly as bad as it looked. It's stupid and pointless, but it's also kind of funny. I couldn't actually say CHIPS is a good movie (it isn't), but it gets awfully close. This is a decent comedy, which is probably a pretty big win (if you're feeling generous).

The big attraction here is that it's so fun to see Michael Pena and Dax Shepard interact together. Their chemistry and their banter makes this movie fun. It doesn't always work- sometimes it's certainly forced- but more times than not, it succeeds. I like Pena a lot and he was charismatic and funny here. Shepard usually annoys me, but that was kept to a minimum here. These two are really good together and that's a solid cornerstone from which to build the rest of the movie. Vincent D'Onofrio is always a good casting choice, and no surprise- he makes this film better. It was fun to see Kristen Bell here in a slightly funny but thankless role. The rest of the cast was fine, kind of typical lower tier comedy level. They weren't great, but they worked well enough.

Shepard does a decent job of telling a story that moves quickly. The film was the right length at 1 hour, 40 minutes. There's a fairly decent amount of funny moments sprinkled throughout the film. Of course, multiple jokes don't land and some bits go on too long, but there's never too great a stretch without something that at least makes you chuckle. The movie certainly could have been funnier, but it's far more laugh-inducing than many comedies we see today.

I never watched the original show (or if I did, I was too young to remember it), but Erik Estrada and the whole "CHiPs" thing has pervaded the public consciousness enough so I wasn't unfamiliar with the source material. Still, not being a viewer, it's hard for me to gauge what this reboot succeeds in and where it fails. It was nice to see Estrada get an uncredited cameo. It feels like for the most part, this film stayed true to the spirit of the original, although obviously the R rating here allows them to take things to a more extreme level. That helped- this movie felt like it had some bite. It was probably a good call to make this movie R. A PG-13 reboot would have felt too ineffective.

To be clear, CHIPS isn't a very good movie. There's significantly better comedies out there. However, it was mildly entertaining and occasionally funny. I didn't have a bad time watching it. You obviously always hope for good movies, but when a movie that looks as bad as this did turns out to be decent, you need to celebrate that, too.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



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