Grab The Popcorn It's Time For Some CHiPs!
As much as many of us hate the fact that Hollywood regularly churns
out nothing but remakes, sometimes those remakes can make for some
fun entertainment-especially when they twist it from drama to more
of comedy without stepping into the world of full on parody.
Thankfully, that looks to be the exact case with the preview of the
new CHiPS movie starring Dax Sheppard and Michael
Peña.
https://youtu.be/FKlbX-t9GLg
As a young kid growing up in the '70s-'80s, CHiPs had
everything a boy could ever want, motorcycles, high speed chases,
bad guys, over the top crashes, and girls on roller skates (I was
an early bloomer). Even to this day when I see a CHP moto officer
pass me on the southern California freeway system I have flashbacks
and keep expecting to see some non-descript '70s sedan barrel
rolling through the air as the infamous CHiPs tune plays
in the back of my head.
Where the original TV series was a drama with some jokes here and
there, the feature movie is definitely an action comedy. Keeping up
with modern times, gone are the
Kawasaki motorcycles Ponch and Jon originally rode and in their
place we see Shepard (Jon) and Pena (Ponch) riding BMW R1200RT-Ps.
Also instead of Jon being a former Vietnam veteran, in the new
movie he's a former professional dirt bike guy and Peñas
character is an undercover FBI agent looking for bad apples in the
department.
The remake thing is old, I know, and it's really annoying to see
another cop remake with the premise of someone going undercover-a
la 21 Jump Street. But hey, it's a motorcycle movie and
the trailer looks fairly decent, as a motorcycle fan what more
could you ask for? Who knows maybe we'll see a cameo from Caitlyn
Jenner-you do remember that Bruce Jenner replaced Erik Estrada for
a few episodes in the fifth season of the show right?
Some fun facts:
In the original series the characters rode Kawasaki motorcycles:
the Z1-P, KZ900-C2, KZ1000-C1. (Wikipedia)
Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada actually rode the motorcycle and did
a lot of the smaller stunts. (Wikipedia)
Erik Estrada did not have a motorcycle license the entire time they
were filming the TV series, he didn't get his motorcycle
endorsement until years later. (Wikipedia)
Dax Shepard is a motorcycle enthusiast and has raced his Ducati
Hypermotard 1100S and
Suzuki GSX-R1000. (Wikipedia)