Following in the flared footsteps of Starsky & Hutch and Charlie’s Angels, the latest 1970s cop drama to get the movie remake treatment is CHiPs.
Dax Shepard has written and directed the movie and is starring as one of the two California Highway Patrol motorcycle police officers together with Michael Peña. Oh, and his real-life wife Kristen Bell plays his ex-wife in the film.
This cozy Shephard-Bell vehicle has distastefully collided with the social-justice-warrior train, however, and CHiPs, which is released March 24, now faces accusations that it is homophobic.
The anti-gay charges stem from the number of dick jokes in the red band and green band trailers released to drum up interest in the movie. There are several erection jokes and at one stage in the trailer, Peña’s character “Ponch” carries Shepard’s injured character Jon to the bathroom clad only in his underwear only for “Ponch” to take an accidental face plant from his partner’s stiff penis.
See for yourself. But people on social media say the scenes are homophobic and typify the “gay panic” scares of previous eras:
Man, that CHiPs movie, who wants that? Racist jokes, homophobic jokes, an IP no one has thought of in 25 years… how does this even exist?
— Tyler Ex Machina (@batwithoutfear) March 11, 2017
Is there an #oscar for most homophobic trailer? If so, I hope the #CHiPs cast is red carpet ready! I love ya, Dax and Kristen, but SHAME
— Charlie Smith (@Chicago7Charlie) February 25, 2017
Saw the trailer for Chips yesterday and beside the fact it looked god-awful, I’ve come up w/ a new promotional title: Homophobia: The Movie
— disco lemonade (@em1lyer1ckson) March 6, 2017
Chips looks remarkably homophobic. All jokes in preview rotate around a dude being too close to another dudes junk.
— Janiac (@JanesAmerica) January 20, 2017
Whats up with the gay panic, dax shepard CHIPS movie? Some real early 2000s shit
— Witch-Boy (@calamityhey) January 28, 2017
So there’s a film of CHiPs coming eh?
I saw a pre-roll trailer.
Holy shit.
Is this from the 1970s?
Dick joke. Homophobic joke. Dick joke.— 5⃣6⃣0⃣7⃣6⃣1⃣8⃣ (@MikeDiver) January 16, 2017
do i go to the new CHiPs film? it seems like it might have homophobic jokes but maybe I’m imagining that. And Michael Peña is muy hilarante!
— Paul Roth in LA 💸 (@paulidin) March 19, 2017
Shepard and Bell—youngish Hollywood liberal royalty—are in danger of squandering the progressive brownie points they accrued for saying things like their declaration in 2012 that they would wait until gay marriage was legal in every US state before getting hitched themselves,.
Meantime fans of the original CHiPs TV series meantime are getting upset at the dick jokes not being part of the show—which ran on NBC between 1977 and 1983—that they so fondly remember:
I haven’t seen every episode of CHiPs, but I’ve seen a few, and I don’t recall all that crazy homophobic dick-touching… @chipsmovie #CHiPs
— Julian Sage (@juliansage) March 2, 2017