21 Jump Street

Comedies can and have been a great genre for entertaining us, so we can have fun with the characters involved and enjoy ourselves for the 90 minute- 2 hour running time. I would say, in some respects, I got that with "21 Jump Street", but in other ways probably not.

In high school, Scmidt (Jonah Hill) was a dork and Jenko (Channing Tatum) was a popular jock. After graduation, they both joined the police force, Jenko being the brawn and Schmidt being the brains, and ended up as partners riding bicycles in the park which they actually botched up. To put them somewhere, Capt. Dickson (Ice Cube) decides to put them undercover, mostly because of their youthful looks, as high school students. They will have to infiltrate a drug ring with Eric (Dave Franco) as dealer, that is supplying high school students with a synthetic drug called HFS that has already killed a couple of students. Their mission is to find the dealer that will lead them ultimately to the supplier.

Others to round out the cast are Brie Larson as Molly, girlfriend of Eric, Rob Riggle as Mr. Walters, a teacher, DeRay Davis as Domingo, Dax Flame as Zack, Chris Parnell as Mr. Gordon, and Ellie Kemper as Ms. Griggs, one of Jenko's teachers.

This was adequately directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller. These guys don't have a ton of experience, but if they keep plugging away, they will get better which will lead to more work. The best thing about this flick was the chemistry between Schmidt and Jenko. They're such enough of an odd couple, it make their friendship on screen look real. The actual culprit here is Michael Bacall as writer. The idea for the story by him and Jonah Hill was an interesting one and had great promise, but it just got a little bogged down with the way a lot of comedies have been going... to see how much 'toilet' humor and 'fart' jokes one can put into a film to insure that certain demographical audience. Believe me, I've seen worse, but this could've been a much tighter script and still reached that demographic the studios are obviously trying to get into those theater seats.

Out of 4 stars: 2.5                      Rated: R                         110min.