Review of CHiPs (2017) by John M — 16 Jan 2018

Ooof. So taking it all the way back to the 70's, we are now digging up even dustier relics of the past, trying to breathe life into the series about the California Highway Patrol. This is about a rookie (Dax Shepard) and a veteran (Michael Peña) teaming up to potentially bust a crooked cop.

Everybody wants to be 21 Jump Street nowadays, but nobody has the competency or the willpower to put quality into their projects. I think studios think that it will be easier than it actually is simply because they are dealing with already existing properties that they assume comes with a prebuilt fan base because it is already a brand.

CHIPS is a mess, and it makes me feel like I was too hard on Baywatch. Now the only real reason I watched this was because I heard how infamous it was, and based on what I heard, I don't feel that I could have a respectable 'Worst of' list without subjecting myself to this.

At least in that regard, CHIPS did not disappoint, and very early on it is easy to see just why this is so notorious. While I can appreciate that the people making this probably had a fun time putting it together, you still have to have something that resembles a script.

Almost the entirety of this is improvised, and not in a way that is enjoyable. It's really just these two guys trying to make each other break character, and it doesn't play to the audience in any way that wants you to laugh with them.

Most of the reason why this isn't salvageable is because of Michael Peña. Everybody is miscast in this, but he is especially. I personally don't feel that he can lead a movie, and this movie is a prime example on why he is almost always cast as the sidekick that gets limited screen time.

In addition to that, he is easily the worst person here at improvising, and it just leads to him repeating a number of the same lines over and over again with different inflections. I can't think of a single person who was asking for this show that ended over 30 years ago to be resurrected.

I had to watch this over two parts because my brain kept shutting down the night I started watching this, which is most likely a defense mechanism. On top of not being funny, it is not even edited together competently, and there were a few different points during action sequences that I got confused over what I had just watched.

This wasn't when I was drowsy, either, this was in the following morning when I had a fresh cup of coffee in front of me. Add in a generic score and yeah, you've got one of the worst movies of the year, just as I was promised.