Has that 80's coming of age movies' charm

Rating: 8/10 (28 April 2016)

What drives the movie primarily is the screen chemistry between its two lead actors but that's not to say it lacks depth otherwise. It works well as a coming of age movie where our arrested development case protagonists go back to high school, one with hopes of reliving, the other with goals of avoiding their respective experiences a few years back. There is a resurgence of coming of age movies in recent years, perhaps people like to reminisce through others what it meant once to have their whole life ahead of them, without the accumulated cynicism of old age to weigh them down, perhaps they would like to forget momentarily that their best years are behind them. Certainly, 21 Jump Street also has this naive quality, could be willful ignorance to some extent, but as rare as it is, it's nice to pretend a world like that exists where even the bad guys aren't so bad as they shoot and murder undercover police officers in cold blood.
21 Jump Street captures the essence of that youthful innocence, that high-school camaraderie between best friends and sprinkles some dust of platonic romance on top of it for good measure. The end result is a surprisingly witty, endearing and funny movie which creates a good balance between being self-aware yet sticking to the conventions where it matters. It's a really good watch as a result.