All Rise...

Judge Clark Douglas is going to repeat the review he wrote last time.

The Charge

These undercover cops are going to party like it's their job.

Opening Statement

"Do the same thing as last time. Everyone's happy."

Facts of the Case

In 21 Jump Street, undercover cops Schmidt (Jonah Hill, Moneyball) and Jenko (Channing Tatum, Magic Mike) successfully posed as high school students and busted a handful of drug dealers. Now, they're being called on to do the exact same thing—except this time they're going to college!

The Evidence

At this point, Phil Lord and Chris Miller have firmly established themselves as the guys who can take a seemingly dull property and find a way to make it feel fresh. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs brought a lot of humor and sweetness to a seemingly unnecessary adaptation of a short children's book, The Lego Movie brought enough joyful cleverness to the table to mask the fact that the film was basically a feature-length commercial and 21 Jump Street brought a playful self-awareness to what initially looked like an uninspired reboot of an old TV show. All three of those projects could be accurately described as "pleasant surprises." The problem with 22 Jump Street is that the surprise is gone, and no amount of meta humor is going to change that fact.

22 Jump Street is a derivative sequel, but it knows that it's a derivative sequel and is constantly commenting on that fact. The first film used this gag, too, but the joke's starting to wear a little thin. Yes, there are jokes about how 22 Jump Street basically repeats the events of the first movie to a large degree, but…well, it's still repeating the jokes of the first movie to a large degree. The movie effectively MST3Ks itself, leaping to mock its own conventionality at every turn before anyone else can do so. I suppose that makes it critic-proof in a certain sense—can you really criticize a movie for doing something dumb when the characters are cracking wise about how dumb it is?—but it's hard to ignore that this franchise is already feeling restless and bored with itself. A closing credits montage amusingly details all of the uninspired sequels we might see in the future, but it would be funnier if we weren't convinced that at least some of those will probably become a reality.

The film's structure is a little unusual. The first eighty minutes or so are devoted to a college-themed remix of the first film, complete with a smirking line about how everything is playing out in exactly the same way. However, the final third threatens to wander off in a different direction entirely. I was excited about the possibilities—now that they had fulfilled their obligations, what crazy things might Lord and Miller have in store for their final act? Alas, that stretch of the film turns out to be the weakest: a noisy, action-packed spring break extravaganza which largely favors spectacle over wit. The scene in which Tatum picks up a bikini-clad girl and starts using her as a weapon feels uncomfortably close to a Friedberg/Seltzer parody of Spring Breakers.

Still, the important question is whether 22 Jump Street delivers its fair share of laughs, and the truth is that it does. The laughs aren't as frequent as those offered by the first film, and there aren't any giddy surprises on par with those offered by the first film, but it's a pretty funny movie which is easy enough to hang out with for 112 minutes. That's largely due to the delightful chemistry between Hill and Tatum, who seem entirely willing to try just about anything with each other. Hill's brand of comedy is pretty familiar by now, but he's good at what he does and wrings some laughs out of his character's increasingly despondent circumstances. Tatum is still an odd delight, bringing a soulful loopiness to his sweet-natured, incredibly dim character. His comic timing remains underappreciated. Ice Cube also gets an expanded role this time around, and has a lot of fun doing a riff on his angry, aggressive persona (a mid-point plot twist gives Cube a chance to really cut loose, and he takes full advantage of it). The movie succeeds on a basic "is it funny?" level, but only just.

22 Jump Street (Blu-ray) offers a solid 1080p/2.40:1 transfer. The film is fairly workmanlike on a visual level, but the level of detail is superb throughout. Colors are bright and vibrant (particularly in a hallucinatory dream sequence), detail is strong and shadow delineation is impressive during darker scenes (there aren't many, but still). The DTS HD 5.1 Master Audio track tends to be fairly aggressive with its soundtrack choices, with blaring party anthems like "Turn Down for What" and "Azz and Tittiez" underscoring schemes of comic mayhem (alongside a slightly less aggressive score from Mark Mothersbaugh). Supplements are exceptionally generous: an audio commentary with Lord, Miller, Hill and Tatum, a boatload of featurettes ("The Perfect Couple of Directors," "Everything is Better in College," "Janning and Chonah," "New Recruits," "The Perfect Line," "Don't Cut Yet," "The Dramatic Interpretation of 22 Jump Street," "Jenko's Split" and "Zook and McQuaid Scout Reel"), a bunch of deleted scenes, "Line-O-Rama" and "Joke-A-Palooza" montages, a DVD copy and a digital copy. Most impressive.

Closing Statement

22 Jump Street offers some chuckles, but the series is already running low on inspiration. Let's quit while we're ahead, boys.

The Verdict

Not guilty.

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