21 Jump Street

21 Jump Street is a really good movie I had no idea I wanted to see. And I don’t think you could really blame me, either. The movie is an adaptation of a television series from the late 1980s about a couple of mismatched rookie cops who go undercover as high school students in an effort to fight teenage crime. I hear something like that and alarm bells go off. Buddy cop flicks and high school comedies are among the more well-worn and predictable genres knocking around movie theaters today, and the prospect of mashing them together didn’t sound terribly appealing. I think the makers of 21 Jump Street realized this, because their movie makes merry and merciless fun of its many influences in addition to providing a steady stream of inventive gags and adding just enough heart to keep the whole experience from feeling pointless. I get the idea that everyone involved in the movie had a blast making it, and that enthusiasm can’t help but rub off on audiences.

Any discussion of the movie’s many strong points has to start with its playful screenplay, which was written by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World scribe Michael Bacall. The film quickly makes clear that it will not be taking itself or its origins seriously. There’s an early scene where Police Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) decries the media’s attempts to repackage old entertainment and pass it off as new in the hopes to make a quick buck. The moment is played completely straight, as it has to be, and it works. Bacall also has fun toying with the templates of high school comedies past. The two undercover cops at the center of the story, smart but shy Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and dim-witted man of action Jenko (Channing Tatum), are both in their mid-20s and completely flummoxed by how much the high school social scene has changed since they’ve been away. The popular kids are no longer the coasting jocks but are instead the environmentally conscious, Berkeley-bound hipsters. Schmidt’s love interest isn’t a bombshell cheerleader but an earthy, sweetly funny theater-geek. The movie keeps throwing out little curveballs like this all the way up to the closing credits, and it’s a lot better for it.

Bacall places much of the comedy on the shoulders of his stars, and they’re more than up to the task. At this point in his career, Jonah Hill has the endearingly insecure guy-next-door thing down to a science. He’s awkwardly affecting in early scenes that show his geeky high school past and wryly self-effacing for the rest. But the real surprise here is Tatum, who up to now has been known mainly as an action star or That Handsome Guy in sickly sweet melodramas like The Vow. With this movie he shows a real talent for deadpan comedy. Better still, the leads don’t hog all to the laughs to themselves. Like last year’s Bridesmaids, 21 Jump Street makes a point to fill out the minor roles with a host of comedy veterans and, what’s more impressive, to actually give them things to do. Saturday Night Live’s Chris Parnell gets a few laughs as the spaced-out head of the school’s theater program, The Office’s Ellie Kemper amuses as a lusty science teacher, and so on. I think this inclusiveness is one of the reasons the movie feels so damn cheerful so much of the time. Even after the twentieth-odd dick joke, even as a character lay bleeding on the ground with a hole shot through his throat, the whole thing seemed so good-natured that I couldn’t help but like it.

Although the hole through the throat bit was pushing it. The one element of 21 Jump Street that doesn’t work quite as well as the rest of it are the action scenes, which for the most part feel too much like standard car chase n’ shootout fare to make much of an impact. Although at one point there is a killer gag involving an overturned tank trunk that stubbornly refuses to explode. There are also a couple of scenes, like the throat shot one, that feel a shade too violent for a movie that’s normally so easy-going. I like that the movie was willing to go there, but for me those scenes skirted too close to the line between so-sick-it’s-funny and just kinda sick.

But hey, at least the movie’s not afraid to earn its R rating. And the bulk of it is so fresh, so free-wheeling and warmly funny, that it might force me to revise my opinion of all television from the 80s. If this movie is a sign of things to come, why not go ahead and make a Magnum P.I. adaptation? Revive Doogie Howser. Call Chris Rock and get cracking on a Cosby Show flick. Good on the producers of 21 Jump Street for taking a movie people probably didn’t expect much from and turning it into something worth seeing.