Phil Lord and Chris Miller have a made a career out of
meta-absurdism, first in their short-lived Mtv cartoon “Clone High” and then
later with their feature-length animated films “Cloudy With a Chance of
Meatballs” and this year’s “The Lego Movie.” While primarily working on high
concept, half-thought adaptations, these guys know exactly how to approach a
project with enough creative distance to see Hollywood cynicism for what it is
and point it out on screen, while still living up to their end of the bargain.
This puts them in the unique position where they can make fun of their own
movies and be as subversive as they want as long as they still make a profit.
Like
their animated features, nobody expected a “21 Jump Street” movie to be
anything worthwhile, but because of their devil may care self-awareness they
managed to wrangle an adaptation of a forgotten 80s high school drama into
being a pretty relevant and effective comedy. The sequel—an even harder pill to
swallow conceptually— doesn’t deliver as much heart or as much insight into the
modern American teenage experience, but it does maintain the first movie’s
quick wit and the skewering of its own commercial purpose.
After a
disastrous drug pinch, undercover agents Jenko (Channing Tatum) and Schmidt
(Jonah Hill) are placed back into their student personas, now enrolled in
University to find the source of a new street drug called WhyPhy. While there,
they each find a new niche to fit into. Jenko finds his fit as a super-jock football
star, and Schmidt finds love as a sensitive poetry slammer.
While
the plot is peripherally interested in the drug case they’re supposed to be
following, the movie tends to focus more on the two’s relationships and the
awkwardness of masculine bonding in male dominated crime-comedies. The
Lord/Miller meta-humor is prevalent throughout, including many fourth-wall shattering
in-jokes about the franchise itself as well as pop-culture references surrounding
both actors’ celebrity. However, instead of the perceptive commentary
surrounding teen trends that peppered the first movie, this installment delves
more into homoerotic tension inherent in cop movies and post-Apatow buddy
flicks. As Jenko finds kinship with a dreamy football meathead and Schmidt
falls for an artsy creative writing major, the two begin to drift apart, causing
jealousies and comedic set-pieces based on clichés and set-ups from American
rom-coms.
The gay jokes become even more punctuated when
Tatum’s character berates a drug dealer for using the three lettered ‘F’ word,
in a scene that could be interpreted as a sign that casual homophobia is
officially intolerable or that straight Hollywood has to find craftier ways to
get away with it. This double-sided suspicion can be read throughout the film’s
entirety, but because it kept me laughing and because I am still on board with
the unlikely comedic screen chemistry between Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill I
am willing to give the questionable social politics within movie the benefit of
doubt. Others may not be as forgiving.
As a
pop-corn comedy “22 Jump Street” does exactly what it says on the box, it’s
funny, it’s fast moving, and while it’s constantly winking at the camera it manages
to surprise with quick plot shifts and mini-jokes hidden underneath the folds
of the major set-ups. What it doesn’t do as well is tell a coherent story that
moves effortlessly from point-A to point-B. Between the jokes and the character
work, the framework of the story is occasionally muddled from too many gags and
too many call-backs to the previous movie. In poking fun at the excessive
nature of unwarranted sequels Lord and Miller have--maybe intentionally?--created
an excessive sequel that, intentional or not, still suffers from the same
trappings.
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/June-2014
