Yet when we watch an action comedy these days, it just feels weird to see people getting killed. [...] 30 years ago that happened all the time in action comedies, and 50 years ago, “Get Smart” was killing off characters to the sound of a sitcom laugh track. Which leads us to “Chips,” a not-bad, coarse comic movie version of the old hit TV series (1977-83) about highway patrol cops in California. The movie is like a modern-style nasty comedy mixed with action-comedy components from 1980s films, such as “48 Hrs.” “Chips” benefits from having two lead actors who can carry the comedy, though it helps that the script made their characters funny by design. Michael Peña plays Ponch, an FBI agent who is sent to go undercover as a CHP motorcycle cop. Peña and Shepard work well together, and the script gives them some surefire bits to play with, such as the scene in which they argue about an arcane sexual practice that one of them insists “is standard now.” The only drain on the movie’s energy is the crime story, which we’re never really invited to take seriously, or if we are, we end up not RSVPing and forgetting we were ever asked.