CHIPS

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source: CHIPS

The 1970s "CHiPs" television show was a likable, if somewhat goofy and cheesy, series. Though I have a little soft spot for the show, I can see that the idea of making a modern day movie spoof of the series was promising. But try telling that to the movie's star/writer/director Dax Shepard. His first (and prime) mistake was making this movie extremely raunchy and violent. The idea of having everything from graphic sex scenes to bloody decapitations simply doesn't fit with what was originally a family friendly show. This material feels just wrong. Well, maybe this R-rated material could have worked had it been funny, but that's where Shepard's second mistake comes. The movie is simply not that funny at all. I only found two or three gags to be somewhat amusing in the entire 100 minute running time. Shepard seems to feel that simply showcasing raunchy and violent material is automatically funny, but it isn't. The third mistake Shepard makes is with the story and characters. There is almost NOTHING about the television show in this movie. Sure, the movie has CHP officers named Ponch and Jon, but that's it. The television show had more regular characters, for one thing. If you want to see a comic spoof of the old TV show, look for MAD Magazine's take instead of watching this ill-advised feature film.

I had the chance to watch this on an airplane recently. Went in expecting a funny Starsky and Hutch mixed with Super Troopers style movie. The writing was atrocious, and the plot made no sense. The jokes were terrible -- neither my girlfriend nor I laughed once the entire movie. The dialog is also riddled with awful and obvious post-production dubbing of individual words. I've honestly never seen such a terrible movie come out of a major studio.

I liked the movie and thought is was super funny. Yeah, the plot was not that deep, but the movie is hilariously funny. If that means, as an adult, I'm not very mature, then I guess I'm not that mature. I like being able to go to the movies and not be all stiff necked and judgmental. Go see the movie!! You will laugh; however, you need to remove the stick up your butt first to do so.

This reminded me of garbage like 'Loose Cannons' or something like that. Ostensibly a comedy, but with few laughs, and lots of 'exciting' action scenes. There was only one single belly laugh - a physical comedy bit that, when compared to the dearth of humor in the rest of the film, just felt really easy and lazy, in spite of the laugh. Near every other attempt at humor in the film involved sex. I used to like Dax, but it seems every film that he's had a hand in writing or directing has been obsessed with sexual humor. Especially homosexual. He makes a lot of jokes about it, and just like in Hit & Run, he spends at least one long scene straining to make some ham-fisted point about homosexual acceptance. At least it was only one scene in this film, as opposed to Hit & Run. But OK, we get it. You think homosexuality is perfectly normal and we should all be cool and accept it. Stop hitting us over the head with it already. And get some help with your sex obsession and try to write some real humor next time.

Why on earth they had to make this movie so vile. The amount of foul language. After 10 minutes we turned it off. Nothing like the original series. Utter rubbish and very, very POOR script. Some series are just best left alone, and Chips is one of them, if they cannot get the actors, or get a good script. I could think of two better actors to play the parts, and made it a 12A without all that foul language Attention all units, Chips won't be returning in a minute!

Remember 21 Jump Street (2012)? Boy that was a fun movie. In many ways it was the perfect meta-commentary of the type of low-stakes, low-rent, low-brow crap Hollywood has been throwing at us recently like chimps in a mismanaged zoo. Literally anything and I mean anything with even a modicum of franchise potential is being made and remade and remade again these days. Thus when 21 Jump Street (based on a soapy cheap-looking TV show) reared its ugly head, I for one was clenching for an awful night at the cinema. In many ways I was expecting something like Chips, i.e. an ill-conceived, aged and offensive grotesquery that at best is a watered down version of literally everything you've already seen. Remember all those completely forgetful Martin Lawrence clones that were hammered out one-by-one in the early 2000's? Me neither; how about those equally forgettable Kevin Hart movies? Okay, getting warmer. Well imagine that plus a big fat layer of tepid, lazy direction and you got the basic ingredients for what should honestly be renamed "Bullchips." Chips was directed, written and stars Dax Shepard who you may remember as the dude in Without a Paddle (2004) who was not Matthew Lillard or Seth Green. Here he plays Jon Baker, an over-the-hill Motocross athlete who, according to co-star Michael Pena, is "always two-beers too familiar." He's the typical California "dude" who's far too self-involved to notice he's a walking, talking stereotype. Or at least he is until the script asks him not to be. Speaking of stereotypes, Michael Pena takes the place of the rambunctious Erik Estrada as Poncherello. In this universe he's an undercover FBI Agent searching for dirty cops, stolen loot and California dimes willing to give it up to the "Ponch". While it's easy to say Pena is the best part of this movie; saying that would be like complimenting the only cylinder firing on a broken motor. Chips is based off the famed 1970's TV show which ran from 1977 until 1983. As you would expect from something that hasn't been figuratively opened since the 70's, this film is a festering gob of unrecognizable gunk. The police procedural portions of the film are rote and redundant while the duo-building moments of banter reek, of awkwardness and fragile male egoisms that haven't been funny since the Reagan Administration. Yet there they are, on the screen just begging audiences to laugh as Baker and Ponch discuss at length the preference and frequency of night-long a**-licking. Aside from the film's boorish leads, Chips has a hard time communicating who or what we should actually care about. The audience is made aware of who our bad guys are long before our leads do, yet the film goes through so many airless, dimensionless minutes trying to coax our heroes in the right direction. Then the film goes into fruitless avenues to play out juvenile bits for the sake of little or no information pertinent to the story. Then, to add insult to injury they flip through a Highway Patrol database and randomly point to their bad guy because of nothing more than a mean look. It gets worse. Shepard's Baker for example takes a lot in stride – His wife's obvious infidelity, his advanced age, Ponch's bathroom habits etc. He takes it all in stride with the exception of his work which he takes on with the vigor of a newly endowed meter maid. It's supposed to be a reoccurring joke yet because the movie is so shoddily edited there are so many, either setups that are never executed or comedic payoffs that seem to come out of nowhere. Then they simply drop it in favor of Ponch's romance, I guess with a fellow officer (Bock)? Through all the mired, half-realized nonsense, only one thing remains clear – Chips was trying, trying to follow the exact same playbook as 21 Jump Street. Yet while 21 Jump had the rare quality of being reliably absurd and self-referential, this thing is just a vulgar, incompetent mess with little worthwhile to say other than "watch out for yoga pants!"

A maverick motorbike racer reeling from a divorce and a California Highway Patrol cop who's secretly an FBI operative must overcome their personality clash and work together to uncover a major theft..... The theft is obviously the budget that was spent on this film. Dax Shepard is a name that strikes fear through me whenever I hear it. He's made some trash in the past, Hit and Run was a much as a crime as it's title, and although Employee Of The Month was a Dane Cook vehicle, his screen presence ruined every scene he was in. This film came out of the blue. The trailer was dropped a few weeks before release, and here in the UK, there was zero marketing for the film. And her's the reason why. It's an abomination, totally misogynistic, Racist, Homophobic, politically incorrect, and about as poisonous as a supposed comedy can get. When the height of humour is seeing Vincent D'onofrio working out, you know the writing is something that deserves to be put in a time capsule and buried, and years later, another generation will realise just how inept writing can be. The film is incoherent, badly acted, and focuses on nothing more than peoples weaknesses and disabilities in order to gain a few laughs. The screening in which I saw this monstrosity was a tumbleweed-esque place, not one snicker, guffaw, chortle, or any word that can describe expressing humour was heard. There is no chemistry between the leads, not even real life couple Shepard and Bell, the latter whom should start considering not depending on her husband for roles. If I see a poorer film this year, I will be shocked, because this atrocity deserves all the criticism it gets. As Brando said after watching this.....'The Horror, The Horror'....