Primate Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Warner Bros.,
Michael Peña, Dax Shepard, Jessica McNamee, Adam Brody, Ryan Hansen, Justin Chatwin, Kristen Bell, Vincent D’Onofrio, Rosa Salazar, Maya Rudolph, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Richard T. Jones, Jane Kaczmarek, Adam Rodriguez, Vida Guerra
Ponch (Michael Pena) is an undercover FBI man looking for dirty cops in the California Highway Patrol. He’s partnered up with a brand new rookie Jon (Dax Shephard) who is the oldest rookie in CHP history. Jon is a former X-Games star, but his failing marriage to Karen (Kristin Bell) causes him to tryout as a policeman to try to win her back. But the corruption runs deep and they don’t know who they can trust as they try to locate the loot and the dirty cops behind the heist. This is based on the popular 80’s TV show CHiPs, and even features a cameo by the original Ponch, Erik Estrada.
They took a different approach with this movie, not really following the story of the tv series, but rather making a comedy satirical parody of the TV show which was a little unintentionally funny in the first place. This one is strictly tongue in cheek and doesn’t even try to take itself seriously. Maybe that wasn’t a bad idea since the history of TV shows turned into feature films has been mostly dreadful. This one didn’t take itself too seriously and was actually really funny. They could go for jokes mocking the original series and beef it up with crazy R rated humor which differentiates it from the TV show. Michael and Dax have fun mocking their characters, and both are cartoonishly over the top performances. The supporting cast is really good too and help them a lot to bring humor to the story. And best of all it’s only a teensy bit over an hour and a half so it doesn’t drag out the joke too far. All in all, I think it was a nice homage to the original TV series done, as I stated, tongue in cheek, but with TLC as well. It wasn’t a bad break from serious movies, and was more like one of the many parody movies with Leslie Nielsen or maybe Charlie Sheen. It wasn’t bad, and worth the time I spent on it.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
