Despite its promising talent, CHiPs has absolutely no redeeming value. For a comedy, it is deeply unfunny.
Directed, written by, and starring Dax Shepard, CHiPs is based on the 1970s television show. An FBI Agent (Michael Peña) is assigned to work undercover in the California Highway Patrol. He is to investigate a series of armed car robberies, in which a few CHP officers are assumed to be working on the inside. Baker is assigned to work with a rookie officer (Shepard) who is dealing with marital problems.
CHiPs seemed to have some potential based on the cast filled with Parenthood and Veronica Mars alumni. However no cameo is worth sitting through this movie. The script just feels completely lazy. Despite competent actors, not a single joke lands.
CHiPs is two hours long, which is far too long for a comedy and especially too long for this. Fifteen minutes feels like an hour, as there are many unnecessary scenes. This may come from the fact that the main villains are revealed too quickly. Only one is concealed to the end, but it is not that big of a deal. The more interesting villains are unveiled almost immediately. This takes away a lot of tension for the audience, and is a poor example of dramatic irony. It is not humorous seeing the characters trying to figure out who the villains are, just frustrating.
This only hinders the storytelling, as the story is weak to being with. Story is not the point of the movie. For CHiPs to work it should have been propelled by strong characters, humor, and tension. The reveal of the villain takes away tension, and also affects the overall story, losing direction. CHiPs compensates for this by adding scenes that were supposed to function as plot-twists, but actually serve no purpose.
CHiPs loses a lot of the humor because the jokes also last painfully long. Even worse, they were never funny in the first place. It seems that they believe they are ramping up the humor in each of these many scenes. But in reality, it just makes this dialogue incredibly uncomfortable. These same unfunny jokes are even repeated constantly throughout the movie. It really feels that no effort was put into any of the jokes. The only jokes are bodily functions humor. However, CHiPs uses this type of humor through dialogue, not physical comedy. One of the only times it is applied into actual physical comedy is the only time the movie actually got laughs.
The characters are also incredibly weak. Because the movie relies immensely on the two leads, it is detrimental how unsympathetic they are. Despite Shepard and Peña’s competent performances the characters feel fake and it is difficult to actually care about their problems. Considering CHiPs should function similarly to 21 Jump Street, one of the major problems about these characters is the nature of the relationship. It is strained throughout much of the movie, and when it tries to reach the lofty bromance heights of 21 Jump Street, it feels completely artificial.
The complete lack of humor in CHiPs is made even worse by the fact that it is incredibly misogynistic. Every single female character is needlessly sexualized. They pretend to excuse this by working it into one of the protagonist’s characterizations. Because this character is a sex-addict there must be boobs in every scene. Besides the fact that this feels sexist, it is just lazy writing. It makes absolutely no difference to the plot whether the character is a sex-addict or not and takes up far too much screen time.
As a raunchy adaptation of a TV show from the latter half of the 20th century, hopefully 21 Jump Street was not an anomaly, especially considering the new Baywatch trailer looks promising. Comedies can be bad movies and still be funny, but when a “comedy” is completely unfunny it is just pointless. CHiPs hides behind a talented cast and garish action scenes, concealing a senseless and unpleasant experience.
Grade: F