Review - 21 Jump Street



21 Jump Street is a bit of weird beast, it fully acknowledges that it is an 80s TV show rehashed as a film, yet the target audiencewouldn't know that 21 Jump Street was a TV show, let alone know all the cameos rom the original TV series. However this is of little concern as even if this was your first introduction into Jump Street, it is still very funny.



Riffing off the setup of the TV show Jump Street is an undercover police squad where the officers are sent into schools, disguised as school kids to try and find the source of the drugs, guns or whatever is causing the problem. Thus the plot of the film is - 

A pair of underachieving cops are sent back to a local high school to blend in and bring down a synthetic drug racket. There it is pure and simple.



The real genius is in the casting of the two cops, 

No one likes white tuxedos.

Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum). They are excellent together, getting great mileage from their goofy, realistic arguments about the most trivial of things. The other running joke is that these guys look nothing like teenagers and everybody notices it yet everybody also accepts it.

With plenty of cameos from the original cast as well as some very smart gags on cop-buddy pics (the car chase scene is a perfect example of this) 21 Jump Street is a surprisingly funny film.