CHIPS (2017)

• Year: 2017
• Released: 24 Mar 2017
• Country: United States
• Adwords: 2 wins & 1 nomination
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493405/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chips
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/chips
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English, Spanish
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime
• Runtime: 100 min
• Writer: Rick Rosner, Dax Shepard
• Director: Dax Shepard
• Cast: Michael Peña, Dax Shepard, Vincent D’Onofrio
• Keywords: police, los angeles, california, police corruption, buddy cop,

	6.0/10
	28/100
	19% – Critics
	45% – Audience

CHIPS Storyline

The film begins with a getaway driver waiting for his crew in a Miami bank. Following a brief car chase, the driver reveals himself as Special Agent Castillo (Michael Peña) of the FBI. He then arrests the criminal crew who killed his former partner. During the arrest, Castillo fires his service weapon through his partner’s, Special Agent Clay Allen’s (Adam Brody), shoulder. He then proceeded to show a naked photo of the criminal’s wife to prove Castillo’s affair with her. Meanwhile, at the training center for the California Highway Patrol, Jon Baker (Dax Shepard) is a trainee who is awaiting his final exam to graduate. Failing a series of simple tests, he is placed at the desk of CHP Sergeant Gail Hernandez (Maya Rudolph) for a final interview and decision. Hernandez acknowledges his ability to “ride” a motorcycle better than the majority of the cadets she trained. She grants him probationary approval to graduate pending a performance review based on Citations, Arrests and Good overall evaluations from Superiors..

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CHIPS Movie Reviews

what I expected

Jon Baker (Dax Shepard) and Francis Ponch Poncherello (Michael Peña) join the California Highway Patrol (CHP) as new partners in Los Angeles. Ponch is actually undercover FBI agent Castillo who has sex addiction and investigating possible corruption inside CHP. Rookie Jon is former pro biker struggling to start a new career and salvage his marriage.

The gay panic humor is too broad and repetitive. I can’t say that I expected more from this movie. It’s exactly aimed at my expectations. It’s not a praise. Dax pushes too hard which gets annoying at times. Michael Peña is too angry to the point of being unlikable. The plot is a muddled mess. The main drawback is the lack of likability of the two lead characters.

Comes really short in a lot of departments

“CHIPS” is a new 100-minute film from this year (2017) and this one is the newest work by writer and director Dax Shepard, who also shows up as an actor in here, actually as one of the two protagonists, which should not surprise anybody really as performing in front of the camera is probably still his main profession. Before I go on about the movie, let me say that I have never seen the Golden-Globe nominated television show this is based on, so I am entirely judging this film as a standalone movie and not gonna talk about parallels or differences compared to the show I just mentioned. Okay, that’s just to make my position clear. Now back to the film: Honestly I thought this wasn’t a good watch at all. Peña occasionally elevated the weak material, especially in the first half and here and there, there is also a solid moment comedy-wise. So the film is not a failure as a whole. But it does have many disappointing aspects. First of all, I am a great D’Onofrio fan and seeing him as the main villain in here made me curious. But his character is so poorly written that he really can add nothing. The story depicting him as a loving father never brought any emotion at all and he is basically eventually nothing but a ruthless brute with no character development or memorability at all. Such a shame. The plot twist near the end with one female character being his accomplice honestly felt like a bad joke really.

And here we already have a reference to one female character that is written poorly and while criticisms about badly-written female characters are sometimes feminist nonsense, it is very true for this movie here. Then again, the male characters weren’t really written any better. Equality huh? The film tries to deliver from all kinds of perspectives, but it fails in almost all of them. The action felt all for the sake of it, not just the severed head, the friendship component between the two “heroes” never feels authentic and Shepard’s trademark cool/fool acting routine gets repetitive and unlikable fairly quickly. It was also painfully obvious how inferior he is to Peña range-wise. They tried to hide it by giving Shepard really mostly comedy material, but it wasn’t working. And the story as a whole is nothing worth watching either. Let’s be honest here: Had the film ended by Hernandez kicking Jon out as it would have happened in 100% of the cases in reality, this would have been a good thing as the film would have ended quickly right away and I guess fans of the original series would have liked it. Looking at other works by Shepard and their critical reception, it is probably not too surprising that it did not turn into a quality watch here. However, it is also not Razzie material, not that bad. I don’t know if it was a commercial success with audiences, but I would not be too surprised either if they decide to make a sequel at some point. “They” means Shepard in this case and if he goes for it, I must say I am really not curious and I’d be surprised if it turns out better than this one here. Okay, that is all I guess. This 2017 film here gets a thumbs-down from me. Not recommended.

Have it with some fries

CHIPS was a cheesy television show starring Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox. I could never see the film version being a serious action film and it is not. Dax Shepard who writes, directs and stars in it and has opted for a comedy route as in the Starsky & Hutch film.

Shepard plays Baker, an ex motor cross rider who has had numerous accidents and corrective surgery leaving his body with all sorts of metal bits and dependent on pain killers. Now over the hill, he has joined CHIPS because he needs a regular job to get his estranged wife back and riding a motorbike was the only thing he was good at in police training.

Michael Pena plays Poncherello a FBI agent who has gone undercover to seek out corrupt police officers. He is driven, he even shot a fellow officer in order to apprehend a bad guy and also is has a sex addict always nipping in to the bathroom.

This is a mismatched buddy comedy, Poncherello gets to rely on Baker’s deductive reasoning and motorcycle skills. There is not much to the plot as we know the bad guys early on in the movie.

The film with its obsession on sex, toilet humour still comes across as an undemanding, silly but fun movie. They even roped Estrada in for a cameo.