A a poor child growing up in the not always so nice parts of Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time watching television. For a great many years this was done on a small 10-inch, black & white box with a broken in half antenna.
As an immigrant in this land I spent that time not in school learning English from that little TV, and aside from re-runs of Batman (imagine my surprise when I later saw it in color) and Star Trek, the one other show I clearly remember was CHiPs. There were a lot of reruns on LA television.
CHiPs was a show about a couple of cool dudes kicking ass as motorcycle cops on the very mean streets that I lived on. Not only that, but looking back it was one of the few instances where a hispanic actor had a lead role of vital importance on television.
Now the series is being reimagined as a full-length feature film with stars Dax Shepard and Michael Peña. Shepard, who wrote and directed the project, talked about the film with Entertainment Weekly this December saying,
“My aim was somewhere in the Bad Boys, Lethal Weapon world. That was my take on it. It’s interesting because it’s definitely a comedy, where the show is not, but the stakes are very real and the world is real and the physics are real and all those things are grounded. Insane situations happen but it’s not happening in a satire world or a heightened world. It’s a very real world.”
Check out the trailer for yourself and let us know what you think!
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