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Created Mar 22, 2012 03:13PM PST • Edited Jun 02, 2021 12:04AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   The 21st century 21 Jump Street bangs the gong — comedy style — by expertly exploiting high school and cop show cliches. Well mounted, creatively inspired and charismatically performed, it’s almost enough to give commercial crap a good name. OK, maybe not, but it’s entertaining as hell.

   Hell-on-wheels is a major part of the program in a movie that is a deal-with-the-Devil high concept done up with major production values. The Big Booms do take a while to appear though, leading to a running joke.

   A big bromance between Channing Tatum’s manly-man and Jonah Hill’s loser-man works very well.
   Well developed and well played, it provides endless opportunities for gags, goofs and grins.

   Johnny Depp’s cameo surprises even though you know it’s coming, then gets played for all it’s worth pop-culturally speaking and for the movie. I didn’t watch the TV show, not even a single episode, but loved the closure Tom Hanson’s moviestar creator delivered. A final slam-a-rino as it were.

   Hollywood comedies like 21 Jump Street are nihilistic exercises that demonstrate contempt for healthy societal values. Understand that and you’re mature enough to laugh with abandon at what is undeniably an LOL fest. Many in the young-adult target audience won’t understand. God help them until they realize that the values underlying the comedy are a recipe for personal destruction.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Jonah Hill & Channing Tatum underplay their roles and are all the funnier for it. Hill in particular has mastered the movie actor’s art of letting the camera come to him, as he demonstrated in Moneyball but also makes work here on his native ground of comedy. Tatum downplays his leading man looks and highlights his character’s dim intellect, making him funny and all the more appealing.

   Highlights of the strong supporting cast:

   • Ice Cube doing his patented pissed-off act, here as a cliche Detective Captain.
   • Dave Franco as an über cool yearbook editor/kingpin. James Franco’s younger brother proves that there’s a second star in the family.
   • Brie Larson as a pretty cool high school girl.
   • Rob Riggle as a curiously immature gym teacher.
   • Chris Parnell as an overly affected drama teacher.
   • Ellie Kemper as a chemistry teacher who can’t control her own attraction to Channing Tatum.

   Oh yeah, then there’s a small part delivered by someone named Johnny Depp. Guy’s got a future.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Kudos to executive producers Jonah Hill & Channing Tatum for getting series creator Steven J. Cannell and series star Johnny Depp behind the project. It probably wouldn’t have worked otherwise. Instead it slays.

    Loved the high school and cop show cliche touchstones:

    • The dread of asking for a prom date.
    • “One strap” or “Two straps”: peer pressure writ small.
    • The pissed off Captain.
    • And on and on…

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    Directors Phil Lord & Chris Miller adroitly repeat several scenarios, making their replays funnier and more resonant. They do it with a prom invite, and even more cleverly with the tripping stages of a designer drug.

12. Play OK 2.5

    OK, the screenplay is better than OK. I just can’t bring myself to award a Good to something this tawdry.

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.9

    Should high school kids watch this adult-oriented high school movie? No. It’s cultural crack, full of designer drugs, random sex and trivialized violence, all in the name of laughs. The laughs come, but the cultural damage done to impressionable minds has to be a worry.

    Even worse was the fact that I heard pre-school kids in the audience at a 10PM show. WTF are their parents thinking? No wonder we’ve got social problems in this country.

17. Sex Erotic 2.6

18. Violence Fierce 2.1

19. Rudeness Nasty 4.1

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.2

    Deeply surreal. Got that kids? Life ain’t like this, not if you want to live.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.2

23. Biological Surreal 2.3

24. Physical Surreal 2.1