AUSTIN, Texas — When the first trailer for 21 Jump Street was released late last year, we were cautiously optimistic. It looked funny, but really? Another long-gone TV show getting recharged to make a buck? And with Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill — are you kidding?
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Yes, they were. And they nailed the punch line.
Thanks to a level of self-awareness so acute it’s like the film reached Zen, the R-rated 21 Jump Street delivers a kick to the dead ass of the standard reboot. Going full-on in its embrace of the fact that it’s rehashing the TV show’s setup of undercover cops passing as teens to investigate wrongdoing in high schools and colleges — and taking every opportunity to make fun of itself — the get-high-bring-a-friend popcorn flick gets away with so many gags that wouldn’t work anywhere else that it should be a crime.
“We had this feeling that if the relationship between those guys is grounded in reality and you care about it and the stakes of the movie are real, then it gives you license to do some of the crazier things we do in the movie,” co-director Chris Miller said in an interview with Wired at South by Southwest, where the film premiered Monday night. “We tried to do some things where we were like winking at the audiences without breaking the fourth wall.”
To that end, the movie begins with Schmidt (played by Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) — two guys from opposite ends of their high school’s social spectrum — pairing up in the police academy to help each other graduate. But when they screw up an arrest for not knowing the Miranda rights, Deputy Chief Hardy (Nick Offerman) tells them they’ll be going undercover as teenagers because the force’s higher-ups “lack creativity” and are simply out to “recycle old ideas.”
Example: “I remember one time doing cocaine with Willie Nelson’s horse.” Moments like that, said Miller and his co-director Phil Lord (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs), are meant to telegraph the fact that they’re aware of the inherent groan factor in reviving a television show from the 1980s in movie form a la The A-Team or Miami Vice.
With 21 Jump Street, they’ve simply made a really great action-comedy, something almost like Lethal Weapon for the Superbad generation (thank Hill’s story and Michael Bacall‘s wonderful script for that). The movie lays everything on thick in the best way possible — like, for example, Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) telling Schmidt and Jenko to embrace stereotypes while also noting that they are being asked to look into a new synthetic party drug because a young man has OD’d and, “As you can see, this kid is white, so people actually give a shit.”
The rest of the plot evolves pretty naturally from that moment. Two guys, one who loved high school and one who didn’t, are sent back into the trenches to find the source of the new teenage party drug being sold to students. Left to their own devices, they party a lot, do pretty much everything wrong and wind up in car chases, shootouts and Peter Pan costumes along the way.
The film does a good job serving up the humorous dynamic between Hill and Tatum, who became fast friends on set. When it turns out that today’s hip teens are more smart and accepting, Hill’s Schmidt becomes the one embraced by the cool crowd and Jenko is left to the bottom of the social totem pole — a situation for which he blames Glee. The tension between them grows and they bicker like an old married couple, fighting about everything from when to shoot a perp to how to infiltrate the drug-dealing circle run by handsome hippie Eric Molson (Dave Franco — yes, James’ brother).
“They developed a real-life bromance on the set,” Miller said. “We were just the beneficiaries of their natural chemistry that they had.”
It is something of a surprise pairing. Hill is the natural choice to play a dweeb who just wants to be accepted and be a badass cop, but Tatum isn’t necessarily the first name in comedy. (“There aren’t a lot of guys with big muscles in comedies now,” Lord notes.) However, Tatum’s performance is hysterical. He’s completely unafraid to use his good looks for laughs, and has natural comedic timing that doesn’t blink when Hill’s cadence reaches mega-awkward.
“We’re chicken. I’m afraid of just having the jokes that are on the page and I want to have funny people in the movie because I’m greedy for their funny jokes.” The cast is also backed up by an incredibly deep bench of backup players, from Offerman to the track coach played by Rob Riggle to Bridesmaids’ Ellie Kemper as a teacher with a crush on Jenko. There’s also Chris Parnell, who steals countless scenes as a drama teacher with the world’s greatest non-sequiturs (example: “I remember one time doing cocaine with Willie Nelson’s horse”).
“We’re chicken, I’m afraid of just having the jokes that are on the page and I want to have funny people in the movie because I’m greedy for their funny jokes,” Lord said. “I want to stack the deck because I’m afraid of screwing up.”
Screw up, they didn’t. They succeeded in making a movie so full of balls-to-the-wall action and actually good dick-and-fart jokes it is impossible not to enjoy.
21 Jump Street, which opens nationwide Friday, also triumphs in pulling off one of the best surprise-reveal cameos in the history of ever. We won’t say who it is, and neither will the directors go on the record with the actor’s name (though it’s probably obvious), but they will say getting the cameo in the film was a coup.
“There was a checklist of what he wanted to happen, so we basically wrote the scene to those specifications,” Lord said. “I will say he wanted there to be some closure to his character from the original [TV] series.”
