21 Jump Street - Movie Review

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Screenplay by Michael Bacall, story by Jonah Hill and Michael Bacall.
Running Time: 109 minutes (1h, 49 mins.)
Rated R (for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, drug material, teen drinking and some violence).
Distributor: Sony (Columbia Pictures)/MGM

...And the '80's remakes/reboots/throwbacks continue. We had many last year and it seems like the trend ain't gonna stop this year. 21 Jump Street, a remake of the late-80's television series about a group of police officers who could pass as teenagers with their youthful appearances and go undercover to investigate crimes in high schools and colleges, kicks it off. What's funny about it is that it's a comedy based on a show that wasn't a comedy. Does that make it a spoof? No. This film is much funnier than your regular spoof.

This Jump Street has Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum (both who are also executive producers) playing former high school classmates who meet again at a police academy. Hill plays Schmidt, who was a nerd, and Tatum plays Jenko, who was the jock.  After an arrest gone awry, the two men are reassigned to a specialty division revived from the '80's at 21 Jump Street (hence the title). Schmidt and Jenko then go undercover as students in a local high school to investigate a drug ring and discover that high school isn't the same as it was for them a few years ago.

Straying away from its source material, 21 Jump Street is filled with raunchy humor and silliness all around, and also makes nods to the original show (even two of the show's original stars, Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise have hilarious cameos in the film). Hill and Tatum are hilarious. Who would've thought the comedy pairing of these two would work the way it did? Like all of the other films he's done, Hill has great comedy timing, but Tatum is a bit of a surprise. He has plenty of comedic chops that might surprise those who see him as an actor who's just the romantic lead. Ice Cube is memorable in the screen time he has, Dave Franco still has good comedic chops as proven in his role on the last season of Scrubs, Brie Larson plays a nice love interest to Hill's character and Rob Riggle is funny, but not as funny as he usually is.

The directors are Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo behind Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. They inject some of the style that made Cloudy such a winner in here, most notably in a scene where Hill & Tatum's characters are on the new synthetic drugs. It's inventive, a little animated and of course, funny. Screenwriters Jonah Hill and Michael Bacall show their love for the pop culture of today's generation while at the same time making fun of it. Environmentalism, Glee, you name it, it's there.

We've had a few disappointing comedies so far this year, but 21 Jump Street is an exception, thankfully. It's raunchy, inventive, silly, over the top and laugh-out-loud hilarious. For those who expect a bad farce, prepare to be shocked. I give the film *** (3 stars).