At the beginning of ‘22 Jump Street’, Officers Schmidt and
Jenko are in the office of Deputy Chief Hardy who says the following statement
to them; “Ladies, no one gave a s*** about the Jump Street reboot but you got
lucky…” That statement alone can pretty much sum up how 2012’s ‘21 Jump Street’
turned out. I mean, I doubt that many people were actually looking forward to
the film, being that it was a film based off of an old TV show of the same name
from the 1980’s that was perhaps most famous for launching the career of Johnny
Depp more than anything else. But in the end, ‘21 Jump Street’ ended up being
one of the funniest films of that year and now directors Phil Lord and Chris
Miller, who are coming into this fresh off of this year’s smash hit ‘The LEGO
Movie’, and the main cast return for the sequel, ‘22 Jump Street’. Now of
course, we all know that most comedy sequels tend to be pretty inferior to their
predecessors, usually because a lot of them just copy the same plot as the
first film but don’t have the same good material to work with. And while this
film does basically copy the same plot of its predecessor, at the same time the
filmmakers are completely aware of that and because of that, ‘22 Jump Street’
turns out to be one of the best comedy sequels of all time due to the fact that
it’s so self-aware of what it is doing.
After their successful stint going undercover as high school
students as part of the resurrected ‘Jump Street’ program, Officers Morton
Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) are eager to continue
working as regular police officers. However, after a botched attempt at
capturing a group of drug dealers, Deputy Chief Hardy (Nick Offerman) puts them
back into the program (now located at 22 Jump Street after the Koreans bought
back the church at 21 Jump Street) because, as he puts it, the reason they
failed to catch the drug dealers was because they weren’t doing the ‘same
undercover student thing’ that they did the first time. As for this time,
Schmidt and Jenko are assigned by Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) to go undercover
at M.C. State in order to locate the supplier of a new drug referred to as
WHYPHY which, like the drug from the last film, resulted in the death of a
student. While their mission seems simple enough (after all, this is the same
exact mission they did before when they went undercover as high school
students), Schmidt and Jenko’s relationship starts to be challenged when Jenko
befriends a jock on the football team named Zook (Wyatt Russell), resulting in
Schmidt beginning to feel left out.
So yeah, this film’s plot is basically just rehashing the
same beats from the first film with not too many differences in regards to how it’s
structured; Schmidt and Jenko try to do their jobs as cops, they mess up, they’re
sent undercover to find a drug supplier, and their relationship starts to
become strained when one of them becomes more popular than the other. Really
the only difference here is that Jenko is the one who becomes popular, not
Schmidt. So with all of that said, why then is the material here just as good
as it was in the previous film, if arguably not better? Well, the main reason
for this is, as I stated earlier, the cast and crew do realize that they are
copying the same plot as the first film. The amount of meta humor in this film
is ridiculously high. It constantly acknowledges the similar plot threads along
with the fact that they have a bigger budget this time to work with ($50
million compared to the first film’s $42 million budget) although, halfway
through the movie, it’s noted that they’re really starting to run out of money.
Because of this, this film could probably go down as one of the smartest comedy
films of all time for managing to have so much great humor in this film while
also playing off of the fact that we’ve seen all of this already in the
previous film.
As in the first film, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are both
terrific here and of course one of the greatest strengths of the film as a
whole is their camaraderie with each other (or, to reference the RT consensus, ‘bromantic
chemistry’). These two work off each other so well and I really like how in
this film, Tatum does some really impressive stunt work in this that doesn’t
really seem that possible for anyone to do (in fact, I’m pretty sure I recall
that at one point, Schmidt (who of course they play up as not being as fit as
Jenko) says that he’s like Superman or something… ironic considering how Tatum
played Superman in ‘The LEGO Movie’). They also give Ice Cube more to do here
than in the first film (where really all he did was just yell at Schmidt and
Jenko… this time he becomes much more involved in the plot) which then results
in one of the film’s funniest moments. Now don’t worry, I won’t dare give it away
but I will say that it does revolve around an incredibly awkward situation that
emerges between him and Schmidt due to something that the latter does in this
that, simply put, the Captain doesn’t approve of. The other new additions to
the cast, including Wyatt Russell, Amber Stevens, and Jillian Bell also do
really good jobs as well.
I know that I talked about this a few months ago when I
reviewed ‘The LEGO Movie’ but after seeing how this film turned out I once
again have to point out directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s phenomenal track
record. They’ve made two excellent animated films; one based off of a very
short children’s book and the other based off a toy line, the latter of which
could have easily have ended up being nothing more than a commercial for the
brand. Then they made an excellent live-action comedy out of an old TV show,
which ironically was a drama in its first iteration. Now, they’ve made quite
frankly one of the best comedy sequels of all time, if arguably not the best. These
two have made a name for themselves when it comes to taking projects that don’t
seem like they would be able to work and being able to make phenomenal films out
of them. And in regards to this film, that’s saying a lot considering that this
film’s plot is a near ‘carbon-copy’ of the first film. But thankfully, everyone
involved realized this resulting in a film that is incredibly self-aware of
what it’s doing with excellent material that has quite a lot of meta humor in
it. This is easily my favorite comedy of the year so far; in fact, dare I say
it, I think this film’s even better than the first one.
(P.S. Make sure to
stick around for the first half of the end credits. Why? Because you don’t want
to miss some of the best ending credits to ever be in a film.)
Rating: 4.5/5
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