21 Jump Street (2012)

21 Jump Street (2012)

7/10

Starring
Jonah Hill
Channing Tatum
Brie Larson
Rob Riggle
Ice Cube

Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller

I have to be honest, I never expected to like this movie, but boy was it good. The whole idea of adults going undercover as kids was actually a fun ride, and I enjoyed it more than I planned to.

Buddy cop movies have been losing their waves. The thing is, all the buddy cop movies after Rush Hour 1 (1998) or Lethal Weapon (1987 – 1998) have been either too dull to comprehend or just mildly interesting movies you see just to mark the register that you’ve seen them.

Based on a TV series of the same name which aired on Fox Network between 1987 and 1991, the series focuses on a squad of youthful-looking undercover police officers investigating crimes in high schools, colleges, and other teenage venues. This 2012 movie adaptation also had the former cast of the series, Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise have a cameo role.

The plot had the duo Hill and Tatum as Morton Schmidt and Greg Jenko (respectively), get deployed as undercover cops to a high school to bust a drug ring, and everything you’d expect to happen doesn’t. That’s the fun of the movie.

Things are not the way both remember high school, as the nerds are the cool popular kids, and the jocks are outcasts. It’s chaotic, but that’s what makes it click, as these two who grew up with high school being the reversed now have to blend to a world that to them feels out of sync.

Written by Jonah Hill, who also starred in it, 21 Jump Street is a movie that suits a cinema viewing with a box of popcorn at your side. Hill’s performance was on a mild okay side, but the main cheese in the movie was Channing Tatum, whose acting range in this movie, stole the show. I guess the most fun I had was when I saw Ice Cube talking to the duo.

The movie was directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs). The directors and writers made sure you didn’t have to go see the original to get the full taste of 21 Jump Street. 21 Jump Street makes fun of everything in its path, even down to drugs, and how we kept expecting things to blow up, and they just don’t. The jokes keep coming in from every corner, making you laugh all through.

The high moments in the movie were whenever the duo were together. The low moment was when they were apart. As the movie kind of struggle there, you can see the pacing drop when we have to deal with scenes where these two were apart. To me that was a main issue, as it turns out the chemistry between the two carried the movie. Then, although I laughed a lot at the high school fitting in scenes, I felt they were too long at times, distracting me from the main plot.

It is a good movie to see, so go see it.