21 Jump Street-2012
Directors Phil Lord, Chris Miller
Starring Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill
Scott’s Review #992
Reviewed February 20, 2020
Grade: C+
21 Jump Street (2012) is a nostalgic ode to the general style of the 1980s, more specifically a popular television series that ran from 1987 to 1991.
The teen police drama launched actor Johnny Depp’s successful career.
He starred as the good-looking leader of a team of young police officers who can pass for high school students and infiltrate potential drug rings, prostitution circles, or other such shenanigans.
The film is hardly high art or cinematic genius. The gags are silly and trite, other times not funny at all.
But the film has a freshness that feels cool, sleek, and fun, with a throwback to a decade of materialism, and it never apologizes for it.
The chemistry between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum turns a standard buddy film into something bearable to watch.
The film is formulaic, but not dull.
The filmmakers aim for an action-comedy hybrid, even though the series was mostly conventional drama and taught a lesson in each episode. They also change course and focus on two characters instead of a group, making it more of a guy movie.
Honor roll student Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and popular, underachieving jock Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) reunite seven years after graduating high school at the police academy, where they are studying to be cops.
Eager to leave their juvenile problems and their dislike for each other behind, they use their youthful appearances to go undercover at a local high school as part of a Jump Street unit.
As they trade in their guns and badges for books and bagged lunches, Schmidt and Jenko risk their lives to investigate a violent and dangerous drug ring.
They slowly realize that high school is nothing as they left it just a few years earlier, and they revisit the terror and anxiety of being a teenager again and all the issues they assumed they had left behind.
The film is mediocre; nothing is wrong with it, but nothing is outstanding either. As the setup suggests, Morton and Greg are opposites in every way and must come together to achieve a common goal.
This is a standard cliché told countless times in films such as Stir Crazy (1983) and 48 Hours (1982), and the reference is from the 1980s.
Speaking of the decade of excess, 21 Jump Street achieves what it sets out to do in this regard with a clever nod to a revived scheme from that decade.
Set in present times, the film is nonetheless a nod to teen films of the day.
Wild comedy and lavish adventures are in order in every high school situation imaginable. Dating, AP chemistry class, and the senior prom are heavily promoted so that any viewer above the age of twenty-five can reminisce.
A fun and necessary quality is the inclusion of a few of the original cast of the television series-Holly Robinson Peete, Peter DeLuise, and Johnny Depp all appear in cameo roles.
This is a treat for fans of the original series and a tribute to its creation, though nothing else is utilized very well, and no other history ever quite measures up.
Robinson Peete’s role is nice because she appears as a police officer.
While it does little to honor the television series it is based on, and instead churns out more of a male-cop film, the incorporation of the original cast deserves praise.
The lead actors are charismatic and clever in their roles, which saves the film from being a disaster.
21 Jump Street (2012) veers too far into slapstick instead of sending an important message to its audience, which it could have.
The box-office hit was followed in 2014 by an unnecessary remake, aptly entitled 22 Jump Street.
