I never actually saw 21 Jump Street when it was on TV. It didn’t strike me as anything I was all that interested in, and I quite frankly didn’t know what to make of this “Fox” network that suddenly started advertising shows I had never heard of on a local UHF channel. Keep in mind, this was back in the days when the national networks in the United States were limited to the Big Three, and Fox initially only seemed to air programming maybe three times a week. But I did understand the show’s basic concept: a group of youthful-looking cops all went undercover to investigate crimes in high schools. Or maybe just one high school. Like I said, I never actually saw the show, and all I can really say about it is it more or less launched Johnny Depp’s whole career.
Still, since I am knocking movies off my various watchlists, taking care of this one on Netflix, a fairly well-received comedic version of the old show that pointed out the various problems with it that said show never addressed, did seem promising.
Former high school classmates Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) find themselves both applying to the local police academy sometime after graduation. Though neither were even close to being friends–Jenko bullied Schmidt a bit, truth be told–they soon find they need each other to get through the Academy. Jenko coaches Schmidt through the more physical aspects of the job while Schmidt helps Jenko study for the various written tests. The two become partners and find police work rather dull, but when the pair both botch their first arrest, one of blatant drug dealing bikers at a local park, they find themselves sent to an undercover assignment, headquartered at 21 Jump Street, where the captain (Ice Cube), among other things, points out what a stereotype he is for this kind of story. The two are sent undercover at a high school, posing as a pair of brothers, where some new drug has already killed one student and may threaten more before someone starts distributing it to people outside the school.
Oh, and then the two guys get their own cover names mixed up and have to take each other’s schedules, with Schmidt being asked to integrate with the local cool kids while Jenko is in AP Chemistry, a class he would have never gotten into even when he was in high school. Can these two somehow still find the drug dealer at the top of the chain and bring him down without blowing their cover?
I knew this movie came from the minds of writer/directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and those two have shown a knack for taking what could be the laziest of intellectual properties and actually making them funny while poking fun at their own conventions. Face it: there is no way The Lego Movie should have ever worked, but somehow these guys made it something of a classic in modern animation. The same is true here. One of the biggest jokes is how much the very concept of 21 Jump Street should have never worked for a number of very obvious reasons, starting with the fact the two cops look too old to be high school students. And yes, characters comment on that throughout the movie. Ice Cube’s captain, as mentioned, routinely points out he’s a stereotype of a character, and he doesn’t really care that much that he does. It helps to make the movie funnier, and this is a funny movie.
Then there’s the supporting cast, many of them in small roles but played by talented comedic actors like Chris Parnell, Ellie Kemper, Nick Offerman, Jake Johnson, and Rob Riggle. Many of these characters only appear in one or two scenes, but they add to the movie’s overall fun. Really, this is just a really funny, really winning comedy.
That said, if there was one bit of casting that surprised me, it was actually Brie Larson as high school student Molly. She’s fine in the role, but the issue has more to do with the character’s purpose as some sort of love interest for Hill’s Schmidt. How old is Molly supposed to be? Because, well, that bugged me a bit and knocked me out of the movie once or twice. Beyond that, good, fun movie, but I wish that but hadn’t happened the way it did.
Grade: B+
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