21 Jump Street. Rated MA 15+ (strong violence, crude humour, coarse language and drug use). 109 minutes. Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Screenplay by Michael Bacall.
Verdict: This lame, sluggish, patchy affair all goes downhill even faster after the Johnny Depp cameo appearance.
Playing fast and loose with the iconic television drama series (pictured) on which it is based, 21 Jump Street certainly has its moments – few and far between though they are. Where the series (1987–1991) focussed on relevant and topical issues of the day, this big screen version goes entirely for laughs and, with a couple of exceptions, misses them by a wide margin.
Like the series, policemen Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) are assigned to 21 Jump Street because of their youthful appearance. Their first job is to infiltrate a school where a drug overdose has claimed the life of a student and find out who is supplying the drugs to the school’s young student population before bringing the racket to a halt.
Mr Lord and Mr Miller’s (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) sluggish direction is not helped by Mr Bacall’s (Project X, Scott Pilgrim vs the World) patchy and distracted screenplay which, when its not having a ball with a drug’s psychosis-inducing side-effects, simply cannot shake the sense that its got no idea where it’s going. Or why. Devoid of originality, the over-riding sense at the end of it all is that it’s another of those projects that looked a good deal more promising on paper than it ends up being on the screen.
The cast, lead by Mr Hill (Moneyball, Get Him to the Greek) and Mr Tatum (The Vow, Dear John), all try a little too hard to inject some personality into the proceedings – but the film ultimately suffers from a disturbing lack of substance or purpose. Riddled with cheap shots and way too many subplots (Ellie Kemper’s sex-obsessed teacher is a complete fizzer), the major disappointment is that Mr Hill never gets the moment to remind us what a masterful comedian he is. The constant references to Mr Tatum looking too old to be at high school only re-inforce the fact that he actually is – but far more problematically, comedy is revealed to not be his strongest suit.
And it’s all over when Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise (who starred in the series) launch into their fantastic cameos. Regrettably, the rest of the cast – and this lame, one-note cinematic adaptation – are simply left in their shadow.
This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.
Hill and Tatum are great together here and add a lot to this film’s comedy but it’s just the way it is all written that makes it even richer. It’s making fun of those high school comedy conventions but at the same time, is inventing it’s own as it goes on. Great review. Give mine a look when you can.
ReplyDeleteHi Dan. Thanks for dropping by. Very interesting reading your review. I can't agree that this film works on any level really – and the more I think about it and discuss it with people, the less-enamoured with it I become. Hill has done much better work than this and the jury is still out on the extent of Tatum's talent. Perhaps with a much better script and a more experienced director he might get some cut-through one day. I wanted to like and enjoy it, and didn't. But the Depp/DeLuise cameo is brilliant.
Delete