2 ½ stars (out of four)
21 Jump Street has
nothing to do with the late-1980s TV show, 21 Jump Street, except, of course, such trivial commonalities as
their title and premise. Such is the state of Hollywood today. Stories
are bought like brand names and sold anew to audiences. Sometimes these
recycled ideas are marketed under the guise of an “update” or a “reimagining”
and sometimes, as is the case here, they actually come clean about their
motives.
In a self-referential speech early in 21 Jump Street (the movie, now), a police captain (Nick Offerman)
informs two doofy, slacker bike cops that his superiors are talentless,
uncreative hacks who have dusted off an old project from the 80s. They
will go undercover as high school seniors and befriend student drug dealers in
order to learn the identity of the supplier of a new synthetic drug.
A scene later, Ice Cube stomps onscreen playing the sting
operation’s chief officer. He announces that, yes, he is an angry black man and
that that is a stereotype and so what? He proceeds to point out to more
stereotypes from the group of young officers who stand before him: the brawny,
handsome dunce, Greg (Channing Tatum), and the short, insecure, brainy Morton
(Jonah Hill).
So 21 Jump Street is
quite upfront about its intentions, which suits me just fine, having never seen
the TV show and feeling no particular reverence toward it. The movie
preemptively dismisses criticisms that it is lazy or politically incorrect and
sets out to make as many race and gay jokes, and score as many raunchy laughs
as possible.
To the film’s credit, it is decently, if only
intermittently, funny and I found it hard to hate its Will Do Anything For a
Laugh attitude. The movie skips along as a series of just barely linked
sketches and achieves its low ambitions.
Jonah Hill, who has convincingly transitioned from husky
sidekick to the yammering, neurotic Michael Cera type he once played opposite
to, is as good at physical comedy as he is fast-paced banter. But the movie’s
secret weapon is Channing Tatum. Mr. Tatum wears his good looks with a shrug
and believably embodies that charming high school jock who could get you to
laugh at any joke, no matter how mean or dumb the punchline.
But his Greg, a former football captain, runs into trouble
when he finds that high school cliques are not what they used to be and that
the social hierarchy no longer rewards rowdy intolerance. The current batch of
students is an eco-conscious bunch of Tweeters and their definition of “cool”
is something more like “hip.” This
neat, little twist benefits the once-nerd Morton, and Greg finds himself on the
outskirts of popularity.
The movie, directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and
written by Michael Bacall (he and Mr. Hill are credited with its story),
relishes in subverting what expectations we may have of buddy cop movies, high
school comedies or a decades-old TV show. For all its flaunting of the
rules though, 21 Jump Street rarely does
anything risky. Greg and Morton fall out of friendship so that they may fall
back into it and their jobs are put at risk so that they may win them back
again.
The movie loses steam as it plods through these weary
clichés, though it does get another big laugh from a predictable (but still
surprising) cameo late in the game. There are still twenty minutes after this
irreverent jab but nothing else tops it, not even one last, disgusting gag that
aims for the Gross-Out Hall of Fame but, for me, felt like it was trying too
hard. Sometimes even the captain of the football team tells a joke that falls
flat.
- Steve Avigliano, 3/20/12
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