22 Jump Street (2014)

We were all caught off guard by 21 Jump Street, which led every cynical filmgoer to scoff at the idea of rebooting the silly premise of a late-80s TV show best known for giving us Johnny Depp.  But retrospectively, these being the same directors behind The Lego Movie, perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised.  I don’t think 22 Jump Street is as good as its predecessor, in part because Phil Lord and Christopher Miller don’t quite – and can’t, in fact – surprise us the way they did last time, though it is enough fun and better than your average sequel.

In a bit of meta-commentary, Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are reassigned across the street to 22 Jump to “do the same exact thing” – track down a new designer drug – albeit in a college setting this time.  That is essentially the whole plot; Ice Cube returns with a slightly larger role as Captain Dickson, and Peter Stormare plays drug supplier Ghost with his reliable brand of comic menace.

First of all, I will say that 22 Jump Street is very funny.  It’s not as funny as the first one, but it is funny enough.  In fact, interestingly enough, had the first film not been so good, I think 22 Jump Street might have come off better; that is, it suffers only by comparison, which is paradoxically both unfair and (in this case) inevitable.

It’s a comparison that’s made all the more apparent by the film’s central conceit of “do the exact same thing” – and indeed, it is very similar to the first film despite the apparent self-consciousness at play.  This is a very funny gag at first, particularly in a scene in which Nick Offerman’s police chief stands in for studio executives, expressing puzzlement that the first film/case worked as well as it did before sending Hill & Tatum back to the grind.  I say “at first,” however, because this is a clever gimmick that runs out of steam about halfway through the film, after which the writers continue to introduce it with diminishing wit.  I see a lot of film critics falling over themselves to praise this move, but it certainly grows tiresome by the one-hour mark.

Fortunately, 22 Jump Street isn’t predicated solely on satirizing the sequel.  Instead, it wisely remembers that the big success coming out of 21 Jump was the surprise chemistry between Hill and Tatum, and the two continue to play off each other well.  Tatum in particular gives the break-out performance of the film, continuing the simpleton (self-)caricature from the first film but giving Jenko moments of clarity and self-awareness.  His are some of the funniest scenes in the film, particularly his well-timed delayed reaction to a key revelation, though Ice Cube is still the key scene stealer with his boisterous delivery and clear disdain for the protagonists.

There is, ultimately, not much else to say about 22 Jump Street.  It’s not better than the first one, which is, to be fair, a rather tough act to follow.  It is, however, better than most comedy sequels, which often merely replicate the success of the original.  But I don’t think the difference between 22 Jump and sequels like The Hangover: Part II is simply down to self-awareness.  22 Jump Street is actually quite funny in its own right, even divorced from its predecessor.  It only becomes something less by comparison, and while I’m still not sure if it’s fair to judge a movie “by comparison” I do know for a fact that I had enough fun with 22 Jump that I can recommend it, especially for fans of the original.

22 Jump Street is rated R for “language throughout, sexual content, drug material, brief nudity and some violence.”  F-bombs abound, as does talk about “hooking up” and the like.  The premise of the film revolves around a new mystery drug, which causes characters to “trip” in a very cartoony sequence.  There is gunplay, explosions, and some blood, but I don’t recall any nudity (nor does IMDb’s Parents Guide).

Come back on Thursday for a look at Disney’s latest, Maleficent!