CHiPs – 2 out of 5
I really like Dax Shepard and Michael Peña so I naturally get a little pumped when I see them in movies. However, when I watched the trailer for CHiPs, the movie adaptation of the 70s television series, I was really disappointed. The trailer focuses heavily on gay panic humor and in 2018 it’s really hard to make jokes that are essentially men with extremely fragile masculinity who fear they will turn gay if they make any physical contact with another man funny. These jokes are just sad in this era and this emphasis in the trailer completely turned me off of the film. That being said, I wasn’t going to declare this a winner or a stinker without seeing it. The bad marketing just had me declare I would wait for its release on DVD. Recently, I checked it out and realized the trailer was very misleading. The movie still has a lot of problems but its gay panic humor was the wrong highlights to lead with.
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| A big part of my disappointment is the fact Isiah Whitlock Jr. is in this film and he never once said, "Sheeeeit." |
Special Agent Castillo (Peña) is informed by his superiors at the FBI that he needs to go undercover with the California Highway Patrol because some of the officers are crooked and committing crimes on the side. Creating a new identity as Frank “Ponch” Poncherello, he is teamed with an eager probationary officer named Jon Baker (Shepard) and the two set out to do their jobs while Castillo investigates on the down low. However, thanks to the distrust of other officers like Lieutenant Raymond Kurtz (Vincent D’Onofrio), Castillo’s investigation may stop before it is started.
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| If he was playing the same character he played in Ant-Man, it would have improved the film at least 45%. |
The first thing that struck me about CHiPs is how poorly marketed it was. I’m not entirely sure who was responsible or what the line of thinking was to focus on the gay panic jokes in the trailer but that is barely an element of the movie. In fact, the film skirts the edge of doing some real progressive work as the character of Ponch is this outdated, overly masculine character and Baker is a very modern, progressive man who is not ashamed of his feelings. Because of this dichotomy, Baker is calls Ponch out on his shit and works to make him a better person through open dialogue and empathy. The gay panic stuff was a small blip on the radar that ultimately could have been left out of the film and no changes would have occurred to the character of Ponch. I was actually fairly surprised with how the film dealt with more modern day thinking and I tip my hat to Dax Shepard, who wrote and directed the project. That being said, it’s not a great example of social commentary and it isn’t as developed as it could have been. Overall, it’s better than the trailer made it look but not as tuned in as it could and should have been.
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| Having Kristen Bell play Baker's estranged wife in the film was pretty adorable. That's definitely a point in favor for the movie. |
The thing that really ended up holding this film back more than anything else was its gratuitous nature and its jumbled comedic tone. Originally envisioned by Shepard as a PG-13 action comedy, the studio wouldn’t give him the funding needed to make the movie he was aiming for so it was rewritten as an R-rated comedy. This ended up being a double-edged sword as the tamer jokes are mixing with the harder jokes and there’s a lot of distracting gratuitous nudity. Sometimes the gags are great, both the more innocent ones and the more graphic ones, but the nudity never felt like it belonged. Look, I like the sight of naked women but the nudity in this film does nothing for character or story development and feels tacked on just to get the R-rating. This becomes distracting because it was needless and ultimately made the film look like it is trying to be a big boy.
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| I really wonder what his PG-13 vision of the film would have looked like. |
Looking past some wonky character development and its uneven humor, CHiPs is actually doing some things very well. The performances are really great. Shepard leans hard into his natural, dorky charm, Peña nails the cockiness Ponch needed and Vincent D’Onofrio is just doing his usual thing and being a beast of an actor who just seems to nail every role he is in. However, the one thing this movie does better than anything else is the one thing that surprised me the most about this adaptation: The action is amazingly well done.
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| D'Onofrio is great in everything. The guy never phones it in. |
Going into CHiPs the last thing that crossed my mind was the film would have some killer action sequences. Dax Shepard really did a tremendous job of putting together actions scenes that were exciting and fun but also really well shot. The camera and point of view is right there among the chaos but is never filmed in a way that is distracting or was hard to see. The motorcycle chases and explosions are all presented clearly and they look terrific. One thing I really enjoyed about this element was the times the camera was mounted on a vehicle. This not only created some very entertaining camera angles and shots but allowed you to see Dax Shepard himself doing his own stunts. The action was way better than it had any right to be and I’m really glad that extra mile was taken.
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| I have my criticism of Shepard's writing but he's cooler than I will ever be. He did his own stunts. |
CHiPs has some things working in its favor and it’s not completely devoid of its funny moments but there was just no shaking that the film was pretty messy. Maybe 21 Jump Street had set the bar too high on what can be done and the level of creativity that can be seen when adapting an older television show but this one just felt like it missed the mark. Even the natural charisma of Shepard and Peña aren’t enough to get this one to ride along to an average score.
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| Mandatory cameo! |
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