Rating summary

Movie		0.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		0.5

CHiPs Blu-ray Movie Review

Goodbye, Mr. CHiPs

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 9, 2017

Enduring bad films is an occupational hazard for reviewers, but rarely have I had to sit through anything so rancid as CHiPs, a big screen "remake" of the classic Seventies TV show. CHiPs is a vanity production perpetrated by writer, director and star Dax Shepard, which deservedly bombed in theaters and hasn't improved on Blu-ray. The disc should come with a prominent warning label.

Shepard readily concedes that his film has little to do with the CHiPs television series, which ran for six seasons on NBC. The original CHiPs was a variation on the buddy cop formula, using two motorcyle cops in the California Highway Patrol (hence, the title). In Shepard's version, neither of the partners is really a motorcycle cop. Jon Baker (Shepard) is a former bike riding champion whose glory days are well behind him and whose body is a patchwork of scars, arthritic joints and titanium replacements. (He pops so many pills during the course of the movie that he should be dead by the end.) Jon joins the police force in a last-ditch attempt to save his marriage to an erstwhile cycling groupie, who has lost interest in Jon now that he's over the hill. In a bit of stunt casting, the wife is played by Shepard's real-life wife, Kristen Bell, demonstrating spousal loyalty above and beyond the call of duty. Although Jon fails every entrance exam—his inability to hit the broad side of a barn with a bullet is a running joke—he's granted probationary status by a sympathetic sergeant played by Maya Rudolph, who wisely escapes the rest of the picture as quickly as possible.

Jon is paired with Frank "Ponch" Poncherello (Michael Peña), an undercover FBI agent sent to infiltrate the CHP so that he can identify a gang of rogue cops who have been brazenly robbing armored cars. The gang's leader is Ray Kurtz (Vincent D'Onofrio), whose character is an obvious steal from The Shield's Vic Mackey but without any credible motivation or backstory. It's difficult to imagine Ponch accomplishing anything at all, since he's been written as an easily distracted sex addict who masturbates compulsively and has a fatal weakness for women in yoga pants. Occasionally Ponch also rides a motorcycle, investigates crime and argues with his FBI boss (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and former partner (Adam Brody), who is supervising the undercover operation.

It's ironic to hear Shepard talk in the extras about how his script included excess plot "twists" that had to be eliminated in the cutting room, because CHiPs barely has a plot. Aside from a few tentative inquiries about the armored car heists, Jon and Ponch spend all their time arguing and wreaking havoc on the highway. Peña plays most of his scenes at top speed and high volume, as if laughs could be inspired by sheer expenditure of energy, while Shepard's Jon is a motormouthed narcissist with no filter or sense of personal boundaries. Shepard cares so little about character motivation or narrative logic that he has Ponch confess his undercover mission to Jon almost immediately, even though the incorrigible "bro" has already demonstrated that he can't keep a secret.

CHiPs is filled with similar incongruities, along with strands of dangling subplots and characters who serve no apparent purpose other than to let Shepard's buddies join the party on Warner Brothers' dime. The writer/director keeps trying to shock with sexual frankness (and barely concealed homophobia), but his idea of humor is so juvenile that even the frat boys of Animal House might turn away in embarrassment. When Ponch has to carry a naked Jon to the bath tub and his face gets knocked into his partner's groin, you wait for the punchline, but it never comes, because, for Shepard, inadvertent intimate contact between two men is the joke. The same dabbling in little boy smuttiness is evident in Jon's and Ponch's extended riff on oral-anal intimacy. It goes on forever, as if building discomfort to intensify the laughter when a genuine joke finally arrives to puncture the tension, but none ever does. Shepard and Peña obviously enjoyed shooting the sequence, but it should have been left on the cutting room floor—along with the rest of the movie.

CHiPs Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

CHiPs was shot by Mitchell Amundsen, whose experience with action features is extensive, both in second unit (on several Bourne  films and multiple Michael Bay projects) and lead DP (the first Transformers). Like most major studio productions today, the project was digitally acquired (on the Red Weapon, according to IMDb). Amundsen expertly lights and photographs the stunt sequences, which, as Shepard proudly notes in the extras, were performed "in camera", albeit with CG enhancement. He's less successful in creating anything visually distinctive for what comes before and after the action, and for the most part CHiPs doesn't look much different than a TV drama with R-rated dialogue. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray exhibits all the usual advantages of digital capture and post-production with a clean, sharp and detailed image, solid blacks and an absence of aliasing or other artifacts. Continuing its baffling practice of reserving the best mastering for its worst films, Warner Brothers Home Entertainment has encoded CHiPs on disc with a high average bitrate of 34.04 Mbps, which is the kind of generous treatment you'd expect from the Warner Archive Collection. But WAC has better films; compared to CHiPs, even the schlockiest cult classic looks like a masterpiece.

CHiPs Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

CHiPs arrives with an effective 5.1 action soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, that reliably amps up the film's chase scenes and the Kurtz gang's robberies (the latter almost always involve some sort of explosion). Cycles and autos whip back and forth; screeching tires and collisions register forcefully; and gunshots have authority without being overemphasized. Rear channel activity is largely limited to chase scenes and ambiance. Dynamic range is ample, if not exactly challenging at either the upper or lower end of the scale. The dialogue is clearly rendered, although there are plenty of moments when you'd be just as happy to have it overwhelmed by the effects. The mock-serious score is by Fil Eisler, who between this film and How to Be Single is building a solid résumé of feature film clunkers. In TV shows, he gets better assignments (e.g., Empire).

CHiPs Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• This Is Not Your Dad's CHiPs (1080p; 1.78:1; 9:04).



• Practical Pursuit (1080p; 1.78:1; 9:15): Stunt work.



• Ducati: The Perfect Bike (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:38).



• Deleted Scenes (w/Optional Introductions by Dax Shepard (1080p; 1.78:1; 10:19): A "play all" feature is included. When played with Shepard's introductions, the total running time expands to 14:58. If you've made it this far, Shepard's comments are worth a listen, because they effectively demonstrate the writer/director/star's lack of self-awareness. When he explains that he cut one particular accident scene because he didn't want his heroes to appear to be taking civilian casualties lightly, one has to wonder whether he's seen the rest of the movie.


• Kurtz Arnaud Phone Call
• Jon and Ponch Cause an Accident
• Ponch Masturbates
• Longer Painting Scene
• Graduation
• Ray's Hipster Traffic Stop
• Ponch Sweeps House
• Hospital Taxi
• Jon and Ponch Talk About House Sale
• Jon Wakes Up



• Introductory Trailers: The House, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk, Middle Earth: Shadow of War (videogame), Going in Style (2017) and Injustice 2 (videogame).

CHiPs Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Michael Peña now has the dubious distinction of appearing in two disasters released on Blu-ray by Warner in 2017: CHiPs and Collateral Beauty. The latter snared a lot of good actors, but there's no excuse for CHiPs, where it should have been obvious from the script that the project was doomed. Still, you have to give Dax Shepard credit for conning Warner out of $25 million with which he and his buddies could play to their heart's content. In the extras' on-set footage, everyone looks like they've having a blast, but they've left the audience (and the studio) with the morning-after regrets. Avoid, no matter how low the price.