Not Quite As Good As The First, But Funny Its Own Right

Rating: 7/10 (24 June 2014)

This film constantly acknowledges the fact that it's a sequel to a movie that was kind of an unexpected success, and it uses that to essentially make the same film again. But that's the joke. The plot is essentially the same as the first one. A lot of the same things occur, but just slightly different. It does work, but I think the only problem is that the first movie does it better. This one works, but I just felt like I enjoyed the first movie better overall, but perhaps that's a matter of opinion.
Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum have really good chemistry here. Both are very funny and the film is quite aware of their chemistry. There's a gag throughout the whole film that is essentially that it treats their relationship as police officers and partners as a real relationship. There's scenes that you would see in a romance film but are played for laughs because they are between Tatum and Hill. These work well because of the chemistry and it's quite funny. As mentioned before, the movie is quite self aware about how it's just a rehash of the first movie, and they make it work. Also an end credits sequence essentially seals the deal with this whole running joke.
If I had to give a complaint, it would be that perhaps the very middle part of the film was a little lacking in jokes. Not the entire middle of the movie, but some of it. It opens strong and ends pretty strong, but that middle area just kinda goes along without a whole lot. There's jokes here and there but they are gut bustlingly funny as the rest of the movie. But I would say that specific middle area of the film is only like 15% of the movie, so if that's the amount of the movie that isn't that funny, it's doing pretty good.
Overall, I would recommend going to see this if you want some laughs. There's a lot of self aware humour and it made me laugh quite a bit. Though it wasn't quite as good as some critics have been saying. I heard really high praise about this movie and some super high scores, which I don't 100% agree with. It's good, but not completely amazing. It has its flaws. I will say it's super funny and if you want a good comedy movie, you should watch it.