CHiPs Summary & Review
Ever since 21 Jump Street came out back in March of 2012, it seems like one of Hollywood’s newest trends is trying to turn campy, 1980s TV shows into comedies. I will agree that 21 Jump Street is a great movie. I never saw the original series it was based on, but you don’t need to see the show to get the movie. The film acts as more of a parody of the show rather than an adaptation. Now, another campy cop show has been turned into a comedy. This time, it’s the 1970s show CHiPs.
The film follows an FBI agent (Michael Peña) who takes on the name of Frank Poncherella to go undercover at the California Highway Patrol. He becomes the partner to new coming officer Jon Baker (Dax Shepard), whose inexperience and various medical problems get in the way of Frank’s investigation. When a series of road heists begin to tear apart the freeways, it’s up to Frank and Jon to find out who’s behind them and save the city.
Like 21 Jump Street, I had never seen the original TV show CHiPs before seeing this movie. I didn’t really know anything about the show was until I found out they were making this movie. I had the lucky opportunity to see this movie at a special screening, featuring a Q&A with Shepard and Peña themselves. That was the cool part about that night, but the movie itself was only OK.
First, let’s start with the good. I really enjoyed the chemistry between Shepard and Peña. As I have said many times before, you need good chemistry between your leads in your film. This makes us care for them when they are in dangerous situations. Shepard and Peña definitely had that between them. Their conversations felt relatable because they felt like best finds.
Speaking of the conversations, I thought the film had really good humor to it. There were some moments that I was really laughing at. The humor was based on how crude could they be, like most modern comedies. While some of it didn’t really work, most of it did, and I was OK with that.
That being said, this movie was just OK. I will agree that the movie relies a little too much on raunchy jokes. It does get to the point where it’s too extreme. Yes, it was funny in some places, but I would have preferred some more tasteful jokes rather than hundreds upon hundreds of sexual jokes.
I also thought the story had a lot of mistakes (may contain spoilers). First off, they don’t wait to tell us who the main villain is. We pretty much knew who he was right off the bat. That left us with no real mystery. It was better in 21 Jump Street when finding the villain was the mystery of the movie. It made us wonder whether or not the people Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum were the bad guys or not. Also, Frank was not Peña’s real name, but he never gets around to telling Baker his real name. So he’s just stuck with this fake name for the entire movie. There were so many others, but talking about then I would be spoiling too much.
Overall, CHiPs was a mediocre comedy. It had some fun moments, and Shepard and Peña turn out really good performances, but the jokes and story hold the film back. I love Dax Shepard, and I loved him in other things he has done, but I wish he didn’t rely so much on crude jokes. I don’t really know why people think endless crude jokes is the way to make a comedy, but hopefully something will change in the near future. See this movie if you so please, but if you were a fan of the TV show, you might not be satisfied.
I saw CHiPs yesterday with my daughter. I used to watch the show and it truly had little to do with it, but we were laughing or squirming through the whole movie! For the first time in a long time I watched a movie without reading the “educated” reviews. It was entertaining, laughable and basically a hilarious spoof on a show that was made fun of even back then. Dax Shepard and his partner were easy on the eyes. The action and chases were quite spectacular. I walked out of the movies feeling happy to laugh at something instead of heavy and full of dread. I hope Dax does a lot more! I love his demeanor and humor. If we all intended to critics we would be paying fifteen bucks to see the tenth sequel of the English Patient!