Sequel out-spoofs original parody
Smart enough to be self-aware, not reverential
review
22 Jump Street
(out of five) Starring: Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Ice Cube, Wyatt Russell Directed by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller Running time: 112 minutes Back in the day when 21 Jump Street was earnestly trying to convince us cops could pass as high-school students, the spoof movie was synonymous with Leslie Nielsen and slightly naughty sexual doubleentendres.
These days, we have spoofs of spoofs and single-entendre sex jokes that rely on various bodily excretions.
What was once dumb is now dumber, which means the timing for 22 Jump Street couldn’t be better.
An entirely stupid comedy centred on two halfwit cops named Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum), the great thing about this sequel to the surprisingly successful 21 Jump Street is its 21st-century self-awareness.
Taking the mickey out of itself from the opening scene, where it offers a recap of the previous movie, and the oddball bonding between smart-but-flabby Schmidt and the moronic jock Jenko, the movie knows it’s a cheap assembly cop cliché.
It also knows it’s a movie, which brings an extra element of self-reflection, and one more mirror for the selfie-era funhouse.
Once again, it’s the gruff captain (Ice Cube) who keeps it real for the audience, ensuring we’ve been debriefed on the project’s case file from the start. First, he tells us he’s shocked to be back with a budget twice as big. Then he tells Jenko and Schmidt to do exactly the same thing as last time — no improvising, no sudden plot twists, just infiltrate the local college and take down a drug dealer before some bad drugs go viral.
Schmidt understands, and lays out the next 90 minutes of plot for us when he tells Jenko the partnership will struggle, and all the things that made the two of them such a great team in the first movie will now tear them apart.
Of course, this is exactly what happens. The partners go undercover once more and end up in a coed college dorm as roomies. Yet, unlike the last time they had to take classes together, the college experience lets them grow as individuals and find their own path — as well as new partners.
Jenko is an immediate hit with the frat boys and football players because he’s athletically gifted and becomes the dream receiver for the all-star quarterback. Schmidt, on the other hand, doesn’t have any brawn and starts to feel threatened by Jenko’s new friendship with Zook (Wyatt Russell), the blond-haired Adonis.
Schmidt isn’t exactly rush material, so he ends up on the other side of campus, watching bad slam poetry and trying to get lucky with artsy chicks.
These bits aren’t all that funny unto themselves, but the whole picture has such a clear memory of college culture that it actually attains a sociological edge as it articulates and magnifies the minutia and melodrama that constitute our coming of age.
For instance, there’s a running “walk of shame” joke where we watch Schmidt cross campus with his shoes in his hand and a bad case of bedhead in the wee hours of the morning.
He wears just the right look of fatigue and postcoital flush as he says hi to the others — mostly women — who carry their pumps and panties back home before breakfast.
It’s one of the better gags, and it illustrates a subtle reason for the film’s larger comic success: It’s sexually liberated and goes out of its way to deconstruct sexist cliché.
Tatum and Hill are able to sell the revision because they’re playing it straight up. Moreover, they have chemistry together — and using their thespian skills, they turn every bonding moment into a romantic soap opera climax.
The movie works because it’s not reinventing the wheel. It’s not even retreading it.
Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie) simply put this old 10-speed on its kickstand and build up an entertaining sweat going nowhere new at all.