Offensive Pandering and Prejudice to Idiot Audiences

Rating: 2/10 (4 November 2012)

Probably the worst movie targeted to lowly teen fart and homophobic humor, 21 Jump Street has no element that is not offensive. Loosely based on the 80s television drama series that launched Johnny Depp on the world, it is not related to that production beyond a title. The premise of adult cops serving undercover in high schools to discover drugs and crime features the bumbling partners as brothers played by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, who are less than competent officers facing expulsion from the force. Sent to Jump Street as a last resort before unemployment, their supervisor is a foul language director played by Ice Cube, whose acting ability is as limited as his profanity laced vocabulary.
The film relies on racial and sexual prejudices that would because of the youthful cast seem innocuous, but are not. Other offensive actions include violence against a gay, black student who is decked by thick-headed Tatum, the first day at school, and later an unfunny and sexually inappropriate female teacher who is ready to jump his studly bones. Nebbish Hill in a slimmed down version, is the geekier and now popular brother, tenuous around the same kind of juvenile populations that he hated as a teen and finding himself living with his overly gushing parents whose kitschy southwestern theme home is a shrine to their beloved idealized son. Even a school production of Peter Pan include the reference to the "squaws" with Tiger Lily. Once in school, the men seek to make connections to the drug suppliers who are the clean cut, UC Berkeley bound rich kid (Dave Franco, James' less than talented younger brother), and the overtly pumped football coach. Why these characters would be thought humorous reveals the worst attitudes of prejudice, racism, and sexual predation that for some writers passes as appropriate for youth-oriented audiences.
Only when the undercover agents are faced with the biker gang of drug dealers and the distributor turns out to be the foot ball coach does the action become interesting with the revelation of undercover DEA agents Johnny Depp and Peter Delouise, (the original Jump Street crew in a brief cameo) but even their appearance can't elevate this film from the worst offensive violence in a Robert Rodriguez shoot 'em up scene. Until the end credits, 21 Jump Street manages to offend every notion of high school experience and once the bad guys are captured, the two officers are further thrust upward to college in hopes that a sequel will be in the works. In all fairness, that would add insult to a gross injury.