I can distinctly remember thinking, “I can do better than this.” I was nine. I was watching “CHiPs,” an artificially diverse drama about amiable El Lay motorcycle cops. For an hour long show dangling off the end of the crime/police procedural tree, “CHiPs” was horribly glib and shallow. Now don’t get me wrong; it’s not like my standards were golden. For instance, I never had that thought while watching, “The A Team,” or “The Dukes of Hazzard.” But “Three’s Company,” “The Love Boat,” & “CHiPs?” Yeah. I can do better.
Almost forty years later, CHIPS returns and while the medium, tenor, cast, and genre has changed, the same thought still remains, “I can do better.” And so can you.
Unlike the TV show, CHIPS is a comedy. It isn’t my kind of comedy – like when a possibly homophobic man face plants in the groin region of another man. But some of you might find that funny. I don’t judge; I just rate. There’s a difference. Sort of. The focus is two California Highway Patrol officers: Ponch (Michael Peña) and John (Dax Shepard). The pre-titles message makes no bones about the fact that the real CHP makes no endorsement of this film and the reason is immediate – both Ponch and John are fools. Ponch is an undercover FBI agent investigating internal CHP corruption. We get to see some of his agency handiwork early on as his destructive Miami getaway-car scurry ends in him turning on the bad guys and then shooting his partner to diffuse a hostage situation. This all could have been avoided had he just arrested the robbers instead of driving for them. He’s also a sex addict, constantly in trouble for indiscretion.
And John is even worse. A former X-Gamer superstar, John is now just one giant hobbling Vicodin prescription. He is equally as qualified to be a cop as I am of winning the Triple Crown this year. Ok, so, neither is a good cop. They at least like each other, right? Right? No, they do not. The comic mileage drawn out of the first 45 to 60 minutes of film is almost entirely about John being an over-officious douchebag in order to justify his badge while Ponch gets off to Lululemon yoga pants. Again, some of you will find this funny. I appreciated the attempt at humor if not the humor itself.
Plot makes no difference in a film like this because belief has to be suspended just to put these two in CHP uniforms. I’ll give CHIPS this 
much – there were enough failed attempts at humor here that one barely notices that neither Shepard nor Peña is a bona fide leading man. Sure, if you give the audience enough of a distraction, they may never notice these guys are supporting cast.
It wasn’t the worst idea ever to give “CHiPs” the Brady Bunch treatment – i.e. making the movie a parody of the TV show. However, such requires we had enduring memories of the TV show. Here is the exact sum of what I remember from watching three seasons of “CHiPs” in the 1970s: Erik Estrada smiles a lot. If you can turn that memory into an entertaining feature-length parody film, I pronounce you the greatest writer in the history of cinema. Perhaps writer/director/star/failed circus clown Dax Shepard (a.k.a. Mr. Kristen Bell – is it weird when you cast your wife as your ex- ? Just Let It Go, Jim) had his hands too full in attempting to be triple threat and direct his wife all at the same time.
Motorcyclin’ morons a deux
Adventure in their own SoCal stew
Would like explored
A question ignored
Do CHIPS abuse like El Lay blue?
Rated R, 100 Minutes
D: Dax Shepard
W: Dax Shepard
Genre: Exhuming a corpse
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Fans of Fist Fight
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: People of taste
