Now working out of a Vietnamese church across the street from the Korean church that served as a base of operations in the first film, the belligerent Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) assigns Schmidt and Jenko to pose as conspicuously mature college students to bust up another designer-drug ring.Ģ2 Jump Street insulates itself from criticism by commenting on its own warmed-over rehashing of 21 Jump Street, but there are plenty of college-specific (and college-movie-specific) jokes on top of that.

After going undercover as conspicuously mature high-school students to bust up a designer-drug ring in 21 Jump Street, Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) try to take their partnership to the streets, but failure brings them back to the same program. 22 Jump Street takes the absurdity to another level, mocking sequels to such frivolous enterprises while commenting openly about repeating old formulas and the perks of working with a larger (but not unlimited) budget. Meta jokes, silly jokes, visual jokes, verbal jokes, referential jokes, throwaway jokes, carefully orchestrated jokes: They just keep coming as fast as they can.īuilt on a foundation of extreme self-awareness-another feature of an animator’s sensibility-Lord and Miller’s 21 Jump Street mocked the very notion of a creatively bankrupt Hollywood reviving a moribund TV show, but went through with it anyway. Like a two-headed Frank Tashlin ( Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?)-though they aren’t entirely on his level yet-Lord and Miller are inspired gagsmiths who are plugged into popular culture and tremendously skilled at layering jokes of multiple varieties. With 22 Jump Street, Lord and Miller have now directed two live-action features and two animated features, and the real key to their success is they don’t distinguish between them.

Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have a talent for spinning gold out of franchise dross: They turned a slender children’s picturebook into Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, revived a disposable late-1980s Fox TV procedural for the inspired buddy comedy 21 Jump Street, and earlier this year, made The Lego Movie seem as if the merchandising cart wasn’t driving the creative horse.

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