21 Jump Street (2012)

There’s a lot to love about the new comedy 21 Jump Street, but foremost among them may be that it provides a fine blueprint for how Hollywood should go about recycling old, familiar properties going forward. I am not arguing that all these adaptations need to be raunchy, R-rated comedies, but that maybe the best course of action is to be more creative when deciding how to approach the source material. Playing the premise of 21 Jump Street completely straight would not have been a wise course of action, and this film gets a whole lot of comedic mileage out of the absurdity of its premise. However, nothing would work if it weren’t for the chemistry between the leads and the film’s obvious compassion for most of the characters. Simply put: this is a funny, funny movie. The actors are funny, the writing is funny, and the filmmaking adds to the overall tone of sincere goofiness.

21Jump Street revolves around rookie cops Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum), who both attended the same high school yet lived in two entirely different circles. When they join the police force, Schmidt and Jenko end up as good friends who are given the same beat in a local park. After what I’ll call a series of unfortunate events, they are assigned to a unit run by Capt. Dickson (Ice Cube) and must go undercover as high school students in order to bust a suspected drug ring. As you might suspect, they start to get caught up in the high school social structure and the typical nerds vs. cool kids divide begins to show itself. Only you may not expect who ends up in each group.

The line 21 Jump Street walks is far more difficult than you might suspect. It must be self-aware, yet not use that as an excuse not to write jokes. It must find a way to balance the high school vs. police work storylines without committing too heavily to one or the other. It must make the potential romance between Schmidt and high school student Molly (Brie Larson) convincing enough so that it’s not creepy. Impressively, writer Michael Bacall (who also gets a “story by” credit along with Jonah Hill) and directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller are able to pull all of this off and then some. They are also sure to keep the proceedings from becoming mean-spirited, which is something that can derail a lot of raunchy comedies if they feel no compassion for their characters. (Bacall also wrote Project X, which was quite guilty of such things.) More importantly than all this, the movie is just plain hilarious.

On paper, one would not think that there’d be a whole lot of comedic chemistry between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. Tatum, in particular, has never proven himself to be a great actor, but I’ve always thought he had a winning enough presence. Until 21 Jump Street, my favorite Tatum performance was in Ron Howard’s not-very-good The Dilemma. This film provides more evidence that he may be a better comedic actor than a dramatic one, and there are scenes that work because of the way he delivers a line or performs a bit of physical comedy. Chemistry-wise, he and Hill hit it off from the beginning, and their friendship becomes incredibly convincing and surprisingly sweet. These are two guys who never had the high school experience they would have liked, and the way they get sucked back into that world is a whole lot of fun to watch. As good as the film’s material is, it is the performances of Hill and Tatum that push 21 Jump Street over the top.

If I have a problem with 21 Jump Street, it’s that it took about 20 minutes or so before it clicked with me. Part of this could be that much of what you see in the previews and trailers comes in the first act, and once the movie got past all that I did not stop laughing. Another quibble could be that some of the characters around the periphery felt like they didn’t get enough time in the spotlight. In particular, there’s a teacher played by Ellie Kemper that appears onscreen for about a total of five minutes, yet my guess is there’s quite a bit more on the cutting room floor that we never got to see. This is something I’ve noticed in more and more Apatow-era R-rated comedies; last year’s Bridesmaids in particular felt like it trimmed out a lot of supporting character work. I suspect it’s just the nature of the beast.

Not even these very minor complaints can temper my love for 21 Jump Street; an intelligent and hilarious comedy that joyously pokes fun at the buddy cop genre, Hollywood’s recycling of familiar properties from decades gone by, and the strange world of American high school. It certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel plot-wise, but it goes about its business with admirable sincerity. It goes into violent action comedy mode late—something that some seem to be complaining about—but I never thought it completely betrayed what the film had done before. If nothing else, 21 Jump Street should be cherished for its ability to take an existing property and turn it into a wholly original film that actually has a reason to exist. That it’s so funny is just a bonus.

Grade: A-