22 Jump Street (2014)
Directed by Phil Lord
After making their way through high school (twice), big changes are in store for officers Schmidt and Jenko when they go deep undercover at a local college. But when Jenko meets a kindred spirit on the football team, and Schmidt infiltrates the bohemian art major scene, they begin to question their partnership. Now they don't have to just crack the case - they have to figure out if they can have a mature relationship. If these two overgrown adolescents can grow from freshmen into real men, college might be the best thing that ever happened to them.
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Much as “21 Jump Street” managed to simultaneously tip its hat and thumb its nose at its 1980s fourth-network source material, so “22 Jump Street” wears its sequel-ness on its sleeve, from an opening “previously on” recap (including a wry “Annie Hall” homage not seen in the original film) to its inspired closing montage of concepts for future “Jump Street” sequels (culinary school!
Their chemistry crackles around strains in their bromance (look for an "Annie Hall" reference) and the fallout at the precinct from bungling any case they get.
There’s a wonderfully oblique reference to Annie Hall (one word: lobsters) and arguably the most memorable inter-gender melee since Patricia Arquette corkscrewed James Gandolfini in True Romance.
There is even a pretty good “Annie Hall” gag.
Playing around with the vocabulary of cinematic romantic comedies - including an exquisitely random lift of a pair of scenes from Annie Hall , of all target audience-unfriendly films - is part of the fun the film's general game of making jokes out of its own existence, but it's not really mocking the characters, so much as mocking the tropes.
Or this from their beleaguered deputy chief: “It’s of course always worse the second time around” — all to signal that, yeah, first a reboot and now a sequel and don’t expect anything other than a repeat of “21 Jump Street” — just worse.
This seems as good a place as any to note that "22 Jump Street" is the latest film by directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller , the auteurs behind a range of self-aware blockbusters, including the " Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs " films, " The Lego Movie " and "21 Jump Street."
The movie picks up where its predecessor, 21 Jump Street (a spoof-adaptation of the TV series of the same name), left off.
When directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller turned “ 21 Jump Street ” into a crude but unexpectedly clever box office hit in 2012, their mockery of the original late-1980s TV show was offset by the corporate need to revive and tend to a dormant franchise.
If you absolutely loved or even mostly enjoyed 21 Jump Street this is a no-brainer, as cops Jenko (Tatum) and Schmidt (Hill) again go undercover – although this time on a college campus rather than a high school.
The peculiar sweetness of "21 Jump Street" has taken a hiatus in "22 Jump Street," a brazen sequel that's both slightly disappointing and a reliable, often riotous "laffer" in the old Variety trade-magazine parlance.
Ice Cube’s angry 1980s inspired police commander is still a riot, you wouldn’t be wrong for mistaking Schmidt and Jenko with Riggs and Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon , and there’s a huge the sun scorched Michael Bay inspired spring break sequence toward the finale complete with the iconic plane flyover.
Lord and Miller cleverly skewer the macho interplay of buddy cop movies (perfectly exemplified in the likes of Lethal Weapon and Point Break ) by presenting this cop partnership as a marriage in crisis.
Though it maybe means there’ll never be a need for another Lethal Weapon or Bad Boys, or perhaps even a 23 Jump Street thanks to the state 22 leaves the genre, I tell you, what a way to go.
There’s a wonderfully oblique reference to Annie Hall (one word: lobsters) and arguably the most memorable inter-gender melee since Patricia Arquette corkscrewed James Gandolfini in True Romance.
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He reminded me more of Alicia Silverstone as Cher in Clueless, characterised by a lack of self-awareness that insulates him from social ravages.
One might as well inquire what the point was of “Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy,” although I don’t kid myself that anyone in this movie’s target audience has seen that, or will get the reference.
But directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — who did the last "Jump Street" movie, as well as the sublimely superior "The Lego Movie" — keep it moving and occasionally weird (with a giddy drug trip, and a split-screen idea that seems like a nod to, of all things, "Pillow Talk").
On their very first night, Schmidt chats up Maya and ends up in a poetry slam for his efforts (Hill does a riff on Mike Myers' routine from "So I Married an Axe Murderer").
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At its best, 22 Jump Street is less an action comedy than a loosely plotted revue, and though it’s not as witty as either Joe Dante’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch or Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz (in which the directors evinced genuine love for their chosen genres), it’s sure as hell better than a straight buddy-cop sequel.
Her deadpan delivery is reminiscent of the star-making work Melissa McCarthy did in Bridesmaids.
The best laugh, besides a man-woman fist fight near the finale, come when Ice Cube’s short-fused Captain Dickinson goes on a rant at a college lunch, and his frenzied fury collapses you into near “Bridesmaids” hysterics.