Somewhat of a spoof

Rating: 4/10 (29 December 2012)

Somewhat of a half-hearted fan of the original TV series, "21 Jump Street" was a mildly entertaining pop-cultural entry to the 2012 film season. Changing in both character and tone the feature is a comedic outtake from the series, borrowing the basic ideas, but essentially formed around a goofy buddy cop flick. When two cop rejects Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) make a mess of an arrest by forgetting the wording of the Miranda rights. As a last chance the duo are reassigned to a revived speciality division on 21 Jump Street, which sends undercover units to infiltrate high schools. When the first mission sends both back to their high school, they aim to seamlessly integrate by recapturing their former school standings: Jenko as the popular jock type and Schmidt as the school geek. A screw-up in school papers has their roles reversed...
Mostly a spoof with little sensibility "21 Jump Street" is rarely fun, mostly feeling like a semi-redundant Van Wilder rethink. Nothing of the original franchise is truly kept, apart from a brief and ultimately unfunny cameo by DEA Agents Tom Hanson (Johnny Depp) and Doug Penhall (Peter DeLuise). Due to this any attempt to compare it to its series namesake is pretty pointless, instead leaving the necessity to vote on the movie on its own merits. As such the plot feels extremely lacking invention with slap-sticky mistaken identity comedy supplanting procedural drama. Mildly funny, mostly juvenile, as a comedy the concept fails to redeem itself in the slightest, thus making it a forgettable viewing comparable to a multitude of teenage-aimed comedies littering the market. Albeit the attempt at self-mockery wasn't necessarily a bad idea, the overall effort was not inventive enough, and although several jokes do catch you unalert with their subversiveness, it fails to reach any heights of note.
For me the main issue has to do with the main gripe with many modern comedy movies. They seem to gimmicky and ultimately contrived to bring about real laughs, as if trying to hard to hit home with a laugh (jokes almost punctuated as if to highlight where you are supposed to laugh). People like Seth Rogen or Diablo Cody manage to somehow avoid these pitfalls, but writer-actor Jonah Hill hits them head on.