Jump this Shark

Rating: 3/10 (3 March 2013)

Without spoiling the movie adaption of 21 Jump Street, as I am thankful no one ruined it for me, I am pleased with one revelation towards the end.
Combine that to the hilarious Nick Offerman (from the fantastic Parks & Recreation TV program) scene as our "heroes" are reprehended by Deputy Chief Hardy and you'll have the roughly 7 minutes of 109 that I liked.
OK, I don't want to be too harsh; it wasn't that bad. In fact, it felt slightly better the movie I felt it mostly mimicked, The Other Guys. That's not saying much, however.
It also didn't help that they, or again, Nick Offerman as Deputy Chief Hardy, flat out tells you what to expect in the best line in the movie: "We're reviving a canceled undercover project from the '80s and revamping it for modern times. The people behind this lack creativity and they've run out of ideas, so what they do now is just recycle sh|t from the past and hope that nobody will notice."
I'm guessing that quote tells us not to take this seriously at all. Correct. But, they still needed a lot more consistency in their direction as this movie was all over the place while never knowing what kind of movie they wanted to be. Was it drama? Comedy? Slap-stick? A love story? A teen romp?
The only thing the movie and the original TV program it's based on have in common, with the exception of the title, is the little tiny bit of drama. Now, I was NOT a fan of the TV show back in the 80s, but since it was, in fact, the 1980s, we only had one TV and I watched this with my sister since she liked it. That said, I'd much rather watch a few seasons of that before I saw this again.
Dumb nerd, Schmidt (Johan Hill) and dumb jock, Jenko (Channing Tatum) do not combine their talents to make one cool guy, but instead show us repeatedly on how not to be a police officer. So much so, even they would've been kicked out of the original Police Academy in the original Police Academy.
They're forced to team up as undercover narcs to take down a drug ring at a high school. Along the way, they break every law in order to, uh, preserve the law. (This is the part they tell us to turn off our brains, like when they used to tell us to put on our 3-D glasses during the movie.)
Sadly, my message is not getting to the right exec in Hollywood: we need shorter run times for movies like these. This 109 minute movie absolutely needed to be between 85-90 minutes, but directors don't know when enough's enough. And hence, for the majority of the second half the movie wanders around from subplot to the next with obvious conclusions.
I'm not sure how this movie could've been better, aside from not being made in the first place or at least (again) better edited. Perhaps they could've stuck with the original theme and not follow the latest trend of remakes mocking the originals. I dunno, but in any case, I ain't moving down to Jump Street any time soon.