CHIPS | Film review - Dumb cop show remake is a bust

CHIPS Michael Peña Dax Shepard — (Image credit: Peter Iovino)

Chip Happens.

Based on the late-70s-early-80s TV series about the California Highway Patrol, buddy-cop action comedy CHIPS is objectionably dumb and even more offensively crass.

Dax Shepard (also the film’s writer and director) and Michael Peña play the story’s mismatched partners (in-name-only versions of the original characters played by Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada), one a bashed-about ex-pro motorcycle rider turned police rookie, the other a slick sex-addicted undercover FBI agent.

The film has them team up to track down the dirty cops behind a series of armoured car robberies. But the rambling plot is simply a vehicle for tiresome bromantic bonding, crude gay-panic jokes and not excessively exciting freeway chases.

I managed one chuckle in an hour and a half. During an otherwise blah chase scene, a handful of camera-wielding bystanders get clobbered by a van. One of the heroes makes a brief check. Then flippantly reports: ‘It’s paparazzi. It’s fine’.

Certificate 15. Runtime 99 mins. Director Dax Shepard

CHIPS debuts on Sky Cinema Premiere on 3 February. Available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Warner Home Video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IfqqUTW-i4

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A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.