Entertainment

Summer ‘Hit’ runs out of gas

Burt Reynolds and Sally Field they’re not, but you could do worse for mindless late-summer entertainment than Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell in “Hit & Run,’’ a lowbudget, R-rated update on the kind of car-chase romantic comedies that filled drive-ins four decades ago.

Shepard, star of TV’s “Parenthood,’’ wrote the credulity-straining but occasionally hilarious script, co-directed (with David Palmer), and plays the amusingly named Charlie Bronson.

Charlie — real name Yul — has been hiding out under his assumed name for four years in a small California town under the Witness Protection Program after testifying against his collaborators in a bank robbery.

Charlie’s girlfriend, Annie (Bell, Shepard’s fiancée in real life), a sociology professor at a local community college, gets an offer for a dream job running an anger-management program.

So Charlie impulsively decides to drive her to the interview in Los Angeles — the scene of his crime — in his souped-up 1967 Lincoln Continental.

It’s not a great idea, of course.

Particularly after Alex (Bradley Cooper, in unbecoming dreadlocks), the psychopath who Charlie double-crossed, is provided with Charlie and Annie’s itinerary by her jealous and idiotic ex (Michael Rosenbaum), who decides to trail them himself for good measure.

Also joining in the chase is a bumbling federal marshal (a slapstick-y Tom Arnold) assigned to watch Charlie, exiled to the hinterlands because of his unfortunate tendency to lose control of his vehicle and accidentally discharge his firearm.

There are also glorified cameos by Kristin Chenoweth (as Bell’s pill-popping boss); Joy Bryant (Shepard’s “Parenthood” co-star) as Alex’s beautiful girlfriend and Charlie’s ex; and Beau Bridges as Charlie’s pugnacious dad.

Anyone expecting “Smokey and the Bandit”-caliber chases will be disappointed — even with Charlie’s background as a former stock-car driver, Shepard and Palmer just don’t do anything terribly exciting with the film’s vehicles, drawn mostly from Shepard’s personal collection.

Better are the scenes of Annie arguing with Charlie — who has been less than honest with her about his past — thanks to genuine on-screen chemistry between Shepard and Bell (not always a given where real-life couples are concerned).

Like many contemporary comedies, “Hit & Run” has an obsession with homosexuality and male rape. Annie’s ex has a gay state-trooper brother who’s more interested in searching for hookups with a cellphone app while on duty than finding Charlie.

The movie’s arguably funniest, if least politically correct, sequence comes when Alex reveals he’s been assaulted in prison — and motormouthed Charlie keeps asking him about the ethnicity of the rapist. It’s impossible to believe either Shepard or Cooper as a criminal, but they certainly know comic repartee.