21 Jump Street

I've been hard-pressed to find a movie that I wanted to see since the entire world got caught up in Avengersmania a month ago. Whether it was the dreary Transformers-at-sea dreck called Battleship or yet the sequel that no one asked for in Men in Black 3, to my mind, there was nothing in theaters that presented a compelling argument for trooping to the mall except, well, The Avengers.

Fortunately for me, that changed when I saw the previews for the remake of the 80s television show 21 Jump Street, starring Jonah (Superbad) Hill and Channing (G.I. Joe) Tatum from directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller whose last work, oddly enough, was the animated cartoon Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a film my family and I enjoyed immensely. The film, marketed as a raunchy action comedy with plenty of violence, swearing, drug use and nudity seemed like a marked departure for guys who had just done a family film (and who will do another one again as they are in the process of making the Cloudy sequel) but the trailers seemed to promise some belly laughs so I went for it, with my wife in tow, but left the kids at home this time. Boy, did we enjoy ourselves. I should clarify at the outset that I was not a fan of the original TV series. I was aware of it, and I may have even caught an episode or two, but I never followed it with any sort of regularity. I knew it was a lot more serious than this movie was, but not much else, so should anyone think to ask me if the film captured the spirit of the old TV show, I'd have to say I have no idea.

What I can say, though, is that this is hands down the funniest film I've seen all year. It's funnier than it has any business being, considering that a great chunk of the humor was extremely, unabashedly crude. High school students Morton Schmidt (Hill) and Greg Jenko (Tatum) couldn't be more different. Schmidt is brainy, shy and not particularly attractive. He is, in popular parlance, a nerd. Jenko, on the other hand, is, as high school students go, at the top of the food chain. He's handsome, a jock, and a complete ladies' man. For different reasons, however, neither of them gets to go to their senior prom. Jenko's grades are too bad, and Schmidt can't find anyone to go with him.

Years later, the two meet up again at the police academy and strike up an unlikely but genuine friendship, with Schmidt's brains helping Jenko hurdle the more cerebral aspects of the training and Jenko's athleticism helping Schmidt get in much-needed shape for the many physical challenge the pair of them must face. When the two of them graduate, however, they end up on bicycles pulling park duty. When they end up messing up an arrest of a drug dealer, however, due to Jenko's failure to read the perp his Miranda Rights, they are shuffled off to an undercover program shepherded by the foul-mouthed Captain Dickson (Ice Cube of Friday and Barbershop fame) in which they will pose as high school students in order to catch a drug dealer supplying a new, lethal synthetic drug to a local high school. Only when they get there, high school is not at all the place they remember it to be.

One of the most striking things about this completely over-the-top movie is how logic is one of its first casualties. Schmidt and Jenko are arguably two of the stupidest fictional policemen, the latter more than the former, I have ever encountered, and it completely mystified me that, after completely screwing the pooch with a simple arrest by failing to read a perp his rights during an arrest, Jenko at the very least wasn't busted to traffic cop duty or some kind of desk job. Why would the police department place a couple of morons like Schmidt and Jenko in a sensitive undercover assignment when their incompetence could well result in their cover being blown? The whole premise of the film makes next to no sense.

But that's one of the endearing things about this movie: by actually throwing logic out the window from the word go, the filmmakers set the stage for one bit of hilarity after another, and truth be told, by the time I realized how ridiculous the plot was I had laughed far too hard to care. Lord and Miller display, in highly stylized and utterly irreverent fashion, why they were the perfect choice for this project given their work on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; the movie actually plays out like a cartoon on amphetamines. Now, as good as they turn out to be, the directors could not have made this farce work without equally talented, and more importantly, game, actors, and in Hill (who helped write the script) and Tatum they have their muses. For Hill this kind of work is basically old hat considering the number of screwball comedies he's starred in practically since his career started, but Tatum is a revelation in his role as the dummy jock Jenko, whose failure to read the drug perp his Miranda rights is the reason the two of them get sent to the Jump Street program in the first place. To be honest, it's always fun to watch matinee-idol types play morons; I enjoyed Tatum's performance as Jenko the same way I enjoyed watching Brad Pitt play a dummy in The Mexican and Burn After Reading. It goes to show these guys know how to laugh at themselves even as they take the rest of us regular schmoes along for the ride.

Together, Hill's Schmidt and Tatum's Jenko are a perfect "odd couple" pairing, and in this film they manage to take the whole "bromance" concept to uncomfortable but nonetheless hilarious new depths. The rest of the cast provides the two ample support, from Dave Franco (James Franco's brother) as the smooth-talking hipster/drug dealer to Rob Riggle as the high school coach, to Ellie Kemper as a chemistry teacher with the hots for Jenko, although Brie Larson, cast as Schmidt's love interest, seems a tad old for a high school student. Fans of the original can look forward to cameos from the original cast as well, including its most prominent member. With the summer movie season in the U.S. beginning in earnest this coming week with films like Prometheus, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and a whole other slew of rather exciting movies coming to theaters I'll be glad to have something other than The Avengers to watch, but in the meantime it certainly was good to have this little confection to keep me occupied.

Score: 4/5