Phil Lord and Chris Miller are wizards, I’ve decided. These two have a knack for taking films that should absolutely suck, and turning them into gold. They did it with 21 Jump Street and The LEGO Movie, and now they’ve done it again with 22 Jump Street. They know that a sequel to an already-risky venture is a risky proposition, so they took the smart route and respected their audience enough to assume they’d come to the same conclusion. 22 Jump Street is filled with characters breaking the fourth wall to point out just how silly it is; multiple characters tell Jenko (Channing Tatum) and Schmidt (Jonah Hill) to do the same thing they did last time, with Nick Offerman’s Deputy Chief Hardy deadpanning “We all know it always works as well the second time.” The whole film is weirdly meta, and Lord and Miller should be commended for sneaking such self-aware commentary into a huge R-rated tentpole release. (For Christ’s sake, a character thought to be the bad guy turns out to have a tattoo of his high school’s mascot: the Red Herring.)
22JS finds Jenko and Schmidt in college, as the end of the first film promised – but it’s online college at the University of Internet. Soon enough they find themselves going to actual college at Metro City State – and as has already been said, it’s the exact same thing. The plot is essentially a photo negative of the first film’s; this time it’s Jenko who has a great time on their assignment, falls under the spell of a new friend (Wyatt Russell, son of Keri), and gets too wrapped up in the whole endeavor.It’s good that the movie is aware of this and that Lord and Miller don’t take it too seriously, otherwise it could end up like, say, The Hangover Part II, which was more of a remake than a sequel.
Jenko and Schmidt have to find the dealers and locate the suppliers, a line you should be familiar with because FX has been running 21 Jump Street on a near-continuous loop. The college kids they meet along the way are all hilarious, from the sureal Yang twins (Kenny and Keith Lucas, perfect in every scene), to the dreamy art major Maya (Amber Stevens) and her blunt roommate Mercedes (Workaholics‘ Jillian Bell, who steals every scene she’s in and has a blast doing so).
The plot of the film isn’t really important. I’m not being dismissive here; 22 Jump Street is completely on the same page. What makes 22 Jump Street work so well is the chemistry not only between Hill and Tatum (which is excellent), but between them and the rest of the cast, especially Ice Cube’s Captain Dickson, who’s given a lot more to do this time around (he also has a new office with all glass walls that Schmidt says “looks like a cube of ice”).
Basically, 22 Jump Street isn’t just one of the year’s funniest films – which it absolutely is – but also one of the most refreshing. Everyone involved is in on the joke, the joke in this case being the entire damn franchise. The fact that a 21 Jump Street reboot could even be a franchise in 2014 is a knee-slapper in and of itself. The film rewards the audience but doesn’t back away from the inherent silliness. And for the love of God, stick around for the ending credits.
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