Cops and clobbers at ‘21 Jump Street’
Bumbling losers played by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are truly winning.
The only thing “21 Jump Street” takes even remotely seriously is high school. Everything else is punch line material — including the Johnny Depp TV series that was its inspiration and the two undercover police rookies now at its center, played with a great goofball gusto by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.
As Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum), this odd couple is inept from the beginning and ideal for the slap-happy sensibility of codirectors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. The college filmmaking buddies have turned their off-center humor into a full-time job more innocently with 2009’s animated adaptation of kids’ book “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” more provocatively with the mindmelding irreverence of the MTV animated series “Clone High.” Miller and Lord clearly understand the push-andpull and hyper-competitiveness that make guy friendships both complex and stupid. That it comes to life so fully in “21 Jump Street” is what gives the film an endearing, punch-you-in-the arm-because-i-like-youmancharm.
In a slow wind-up that fortunately doesn’t last too long, we get a glimpse of the guys in their own high school daze. Schmidt the nerd with bleached hair and braces, Jenko the cool jock with failing grades. A few disappointments later they reconnect during their cop training days, this time joining forces so Schmidt can pass the physical stuff and Jenko the written exams.
Once the background business is finally over — including their inglorious bike patrol assignment and a botched arrest — the now best buddies get assigned to 21 Jump Street, an undercover operation housed in the sanctuary of a condemned church with its Korean Jesus above the altar keeping an eye on things and a trash-talking Ice Cube as the captain running the show. For those who don’t know the basics of the legendary series that launched Depp, the boys are sent back to high school disguised as students to catch bad guys trying to corrupt kids.
Depp’s “Street” was more crime-and-punishment drama, though his brow was slightly arched even then. The reimagined “21” is total comic farce, with Schmidt and Jenko assigned to ferret out the supplier of a new designer drug that is incredibly potent — its crazed effect chronicled by one student Youtube style. Written by the very busy Michael Bacall, the quirky mind who had a hand in the current “Project X” nerd party and co-wrote the inventive “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” “Jump Street” features his peppery sarcasm and his trademark fourthwall breaking antics with pop-art splashes dropped in as commentary/context for fun.
As fate and the filmmakers would have it, Jenko and Schmidt are assigned to the very high school they graduated from, which means a second chance to do things differently. Always the jokester, Jenko switches their identities during their meetand-greet with the principal, with Jenko playing the science nerd and Schmidt the track star and drama club king. Oh, and they’re supposed to be brothers, which means they move back in with Schmidt’s mom and dad.
Tatum and Hill turn out to be even better partners than Jenko and Schmidt. Though Tatum is rock hard and Hill is squishy soft, both bring a kind of vulnerability to their characters that makes whatever mayhem they are up to OK. Hill, in particular, knows how to swing between pretension and panic with the greatest of ease.
Those qualities serve to bring an unexpected introspection as the guys rewind and replay their high school experience with all the ego and angst of the first time, and theoretically the wisdom of age. Just about everything on the teen issue checklist turns up at some point — the out-of-control party, the cute girl (Brie Larson) whom Schmidt wants to take to the prom, the cool dude (Dave Franco) who deals on the side, and all the big, bad bruisers the boys are supposed to take down.
That the school play that Schmidt tries out for is “Peter Pan” is not a random choice. Indeed there are sly, knowing references scattered throughout the film that reward you for paying attention even as lunacy and total anarchy unfold. Which brings us to the freewheeling action excesses that director of photography Barry Peterson (“Starsky & Hutch”) captures with such comic verve.
As Jenko and Schmidt struggle with their shifting emotions and the pressures that the high school roleplaying puts on their relationship, the conflicts nearly always trigger some kind of major action episode with wild car chases, shootouts and a lot of wrestling of the exceedingly awkward sort that boys do. But then things never quite turn out as planned for this bumbling pair, which is actually just fine.