CHIPS

A rookie California Highway Patrol officer (writer-director Dax Shepard) is teamed with a supposed veteran (Michael Peña)—but his new partner is really an undercover FBI agent seeking to ferret out corruption in the CHP. The hit 1970s-’80s TV series hasn’t aged well; its popularity feels like a long-ago thing. Shepard seems set on giving it the Brady Bunch or 21 Jump Street spoof treatment, but he doesn’t have the wit to pull it off. It’s just another buddy-cop comedy, the crudest and sloppiest yet; think Ride Along, only less subtle and realistic. And much less funny. Shepard’s script is missing several key scenes that he refers to but never got around to writing, and he doesn’t know how to put a movie—or even individual scenes—together. He seldom knows where to put the camera or what to focus on. J.L.