21 Jump Street

“I said jump, down on 21 Jump Street”

          I don’t remember much about the TV series “21 Jump Street”.  I remember they were young looking cops who worked undercover in high schools, this went on for years.  And I remember Johnny Depp and his cool hair.  That’s about it.  The film version stars Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as the young cops.  If there were in-jokes for the fans of the original series I didn’t notice, and it doesn’t matter because the movie is funny as hell!

Hill and Tatum who were a loser and jock in high school respectively, are now friends and partners who get reassigned to an old 80’s program which puts the pair back in school undercover as brothers.  There are funny moments up until here, but the laughs ramp up when they get to the school.  The script by Michael Bacall (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) is a rapid fire of joke after joke, plus some great call backs, and the film rarely slows down.

The best moments are when you see a typical scene pulled from every undercover comedy, the relative about to blow your cover, or the goofy car chase, and here they manage to make them funnier.  The directing duo of Phil Lord and Chris Miller who made the under-appreciated “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” clearly know the genre and the formula for these kinds of movies, and most importantly, they are fans.  It’s clear when they take a stereotypical scene and turn it around or make it better using self-referential humor.

“21 Jump Street” is by no means perfect, and generally I don’t enjoy too many comedies.  I leave that to the other half of the Cine-men.  I am glad I didn’t miss this one, I knew Jonah Hill would be funny, even when his films are not, he is.  The only x-factor was Channing Tatum, who at least in this role completely nails it.  I hope he picks more projects like this one, they clearly suit him better.  Lastly, stay for the credits, there’s some funny stuff in there to cap off a really entertaining movie.

--Robert L. Castillo