★
(MA) 101 minutes
Taken purely on its own, Chips is a wretched attempt at an action comedy. I can only imagine how it looks to viewers with emotional investment in the source material, a 1970s American TV show about motorcycle cops (the title refers to the Californian Highway Patrol).
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Trailer: Chips
A rookie officer is teamed with a hardened pro at the California Highway Patrol, but the newbie soon learns there's more to his partner than meets the eye.
Most of the blame has to lie with the producers. With $US20 or $US30 million to spend on a movie, why on earth would you go with Dax Shepard as your writer, director and star?
As a comic actor, Shepard is a low-key but winning presence: a less drippy Zach Braff, with a big, goofy grin to offset his faintly unhinged stare. But as a filmmaker, he's a classic case of a minor talent promoted beyond his level of competence.
Shepard casts himself as Jon Baker, a former motocross champion who's accepted into the force despite a slew of permanent injuries and the fact that he's far older than the average recruit.
Jon is an eccentric but also a sensitive new age guy, or at least he imagines himself that way. By contrast, his new partner Ponch (Michael Pena) is an old-school macho type and an unapologetic perv, a trait used to justify some but not all of the many leering shots of women from behind.
Ponch is also an undercover FBI agent, dispatched from Miami to investigate corruption within the force. But this plot is just an excuse for these overgrown boys to tootle round the Californian locations on their bikes.
A successful example of what Chips is trying to do would be Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz, with its winking use of buddy-movie convention and its touches of over-the-top violence.
But Shepard has none of the craft which Wright displays even at his most juvenile. The action sequences are shapeless and most of the supposed humour is lazy and ugly, relying on "ironic" sexism, racism and homophobia.
Some scenes are downright baffling, as when Jon hopes that his new career will appeal to his estranged wife Karen (Shepard's wife Kristen Bell) – since her father was also a cop, and he's heard that women are often attracted to men who resemble their dads.
This gives us a fair-sized clue about what has gone wrong with the relationship. But Shepard doesn't seem to get his own joke, portraying Karen as a faithless shrew and Jon as a good guy who deserves better.
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