22 Jump Street Review

I’m not the first to say this, but of the genres, it seems that comedies have the hardest time making a good sequel.  Sequels often get bogged down with the mindset of “do what you did in the first one, but more of it”.  This leads to comedies that tell basically the same jokes, just search and replaced to make it different enough.  We get the comfort of the familiar, but not the thrill of discovery (look no further than the difference between the cameo filled fight scenes in Anchorman and Anchorman 2).  This is at the forefront of the minds of Phil Lord & Chris Miller, the directors behind 22 Jump Street, as well as its predecessor 21 Jump Street and this year’s The Lego Movie.  These seem to be the guys you go to to make well received hits out of concepts that on paper look like surefire flops, and 22 Jump Street continues that trend.

22 Jump Street finds the undercover odd couple Schmidt (Jonah Hill) & Jenko (Channing Tatum) infiltrating a school (again) looking to stop a new street drug from spreading beyond the campus (again).  The film is so meta you’d think Abed from Community wrote the script.  Certainly the self-referential jokes, including the introductory spiel by their chief (Nick Offerman), are very funny, but in between those winks to the audience is a sharp lampooning of sequels and the mindset that goes into making them.  Throughout the film the characters will literally tell each other to do what they did the first time.  However, in a fun commentary on the diminishing returns of sequels going back the well, what worked the first time doesn’t always work again.

What does work again this time around is the chemistry between Hill and Tatum.  21 Jump Street showed Tatum’s surprising comedic chops which he continues to showcase here with Hill.  Their relationship ultimately drives the film.  This time Jenko finds himself attached to the frat/jock side of college, bonding with a possible lead (Wyatt Russell) who is hilariously similar to himself, while Schmidt bonds with an art student (Amber Stevens).  Schmidt and Jenko’s relationship works so much that it helps give the film something substantial on top of the jabs made at lazy sequels.  The rest of the cast is also solid.  Ice Cube’s no nonsense Captain Dickson is often a part of some of the biggest laughs, Peter Stormare is just one of those character actors I always enjoy and keep an eye out for a ton of cameos.

In a time when the summer movie season has found itself a victim of diminishing returns from overextended franchises a little more each year, 22 Jump Street is a welcome change.  While it is on the surface a sign of Hollywood’s creative bankruptcy, actually watching you see a film that is clever and fun.  Lord and Miller continue to take a questionable idea at best and make it fresh.  That they made a good comedy sequel is reason enough to celebrate.  If only there were more of these guys for some of the direst movies in production.

Grade: B

Random notes:

-I was disappointed that there was no mention of Schmidt’s love interest from the first film, Molly (Brie Larson).  Perhaps her rising star made her unavailable to be in this one, but it feels like a missed opportunity not to make a joke about that cliché of sweeping the love interest in the first film under the rug in the sequel.

-Definitely stick around for the credit sequence, although you’re fine skipping the post-credits scene.