You may or may not remember the late-‘80s TV show upon which the film is based; if you do, then you should know that it starred a pre-"Edward Scissorhands" Johnny Depp and helped launch his status as a teen idol sensation and eventually scored his name on the Hollywood A-list. You should also remember that the show was not a comedy, instead played wholly straight-faced by all involved. Well, Bacall has thought “screw that” and has spun the series’ dead serious tone into a furious fireball of screwball slapstick, foul-mouthed shenanigans and “odd couple” comedy, and, against all odds, it works like a charm.
The odd couple at the centre of the film are brainy misfit Morton Schmidt and dim-witted jock Greg Jenko, as played by a decreasingly plumpish Jonah Hill (“The Sitter”) and hunky potato-face Channing Tatum (“The Vow”), respectively. Both are partners in anti-crime, having helped each other get through police academy, only to find themselves casually patrolling the local park together on bell-ringing bicycles, far from the explosive mayhem they were hotly anticipating. However, after the pursuit of a gang of pot-smoking bikers goes horribly wrong, Schmidt and Jenko are reassigned, and given the chance to finally prove themselves.
They are handed an assignment by hot-tempered Captain Dickson (Ice Cube, playing the role of the “angry black guy”), who runs an undercover operation at 21 Jump Street. The mission is simple: they are to go undercover at a local high school, posing as brotherly students as they hunt for the dealers and suppliers of a deadly new drug named HFS (which stands, rather appropriately, for “holy fucking shit”), which is quickly spreading throughout the school and has already killed a student. They are given new identities: Schmidt is to be Brad and Jenko is to be Doug; however, they clumsily get their names mixed up when talking to the school principal and are thus handed each other’s courses, meaning hunky Jenko hangs out with the nerdy crowd and nerdy Schmidt with the cool crowd.
There are two running gags drawn out throughout the film, and done so rather well. The first is that Schmidt and Jenko are utterly dumbstruck by the ways of modern-day school life, such as the fashion change of wearing one rucksack strap to wearing both rucksack straps, the more positive attitude towards studying and learning, and the wide acceptance of openly homosexual students. The second is that they, as fully grown adults, look far too old to be hanging about in school corridors and sitting in classrooms filled with zit-plagued 17-year-olds; as is pointed out in one scene, Jenko looks like he hit puberty at seven years old.
The laughs in the film are fairly frequent, the comedy delivered thick and fast and with an unexpected intelligence. One particularly hilarious highlight is a scene in which Schmidt and Jenko are practically forced to take the deadly drug they’re hunting after, resulting in a hyperkinetic presentation of the drug’s side-effects; this ranges from being plagued by psychedelic hallucinations, to a sudden injection of misguided self-confidence, and also to an unhinged desire to cause chaos to one’s surroundings, all experienced and displayed by Schmidt and Jenko in the classrooms, corridors and running track of their new school.
Funny too is a high-octane car chase set-piece that comes half-way through the film and parodies Hollywood’s love of pyrotechnics, setting in place several set-ups for roadside explosions and paying them off with a deliberate, rather unexplosive anticlimax. The film is replete with adrenaline-pumping action, albeit shot with a loony, playful physicality that supplies many of the film’s rib-tickling laughs.
But it’s the inspired pairing of Hill and Tatum that really makes “21 Jump Street” the (very good) film that it is. An unlikely duo, they form a convincing, heartfelt and enormously engaging on-screen friendship in spite of their obvious polar opposition to one another, characteristically speaking. Recent Oscar-nominee Hill does his usual foul-mouthed fat-guy routine, and does it very well, but it’s Tatum, whose one and only previous comedic role came in a supporting performance in Ron Howard’s clunky dramedy “The Dilemma,” who genuinely impresses as the slow-witted goofball with a heart of gold. As it turns out, Tatum has tremendous comic talent, displaying a deadpan likability that almost made me forgive him for starring in “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.” Almost.
What we have in “21 Jump Street” is a very modern, very cool and very funny take on the current state of high school-going, as seen through the eyes of two out-of-place post-adolescents. Armed with a talented cast, a wit-riddled script and a sky-high entertainment value, this action-packed, R-rated comedy is terrific fun that proves Channing Tatum is much more than a sexy plank of wood; he’s now a sexy and funny plank of wood, as well as a very charming one.
8/10
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