21 Jump Street clever and amusing but not necessarily funny

It’s tough to accurately compare and contrast a newly released film remake of a decades-old television show without having seen the show in the first place. It’s been two decades since 21 Jump Street left the air after a four-year run and, inexplicably, it’s now in theatres starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.

They play Morton Schmidt and Greg Jenko, respectively, two former high school classmates who used to exist on opposite sides of the education system’s social and academic spectrum. Schmidt was the awkward nerdy type who was on the juggling squad and aced many a course, but couldn’t muster the courage to ask anyone to the prom. Jenko, on the other predictable hand, was a handsome but dim jock, the kind of guy who expects to float through school on good looks and a football scholarship. They each represent perfectly just what the other opposes.

Unbelievably, they both end up as police academy recruits and suddenly realize the value of being friends rather than nemeses. Schmidt coaches Jenko on the reading assignments and prepares him for tests. Jenko returns the favour by becoming Schmidt’s boot camp sergeant, whipping him into shape to pass the physical demands of the job.

This all takes place within the first 10 minutes of the movie. The other 100 minutes are occupied by this odd couple, now a team, as they go from bicycle cops on patrol to undercover agents at a high school. They’re on the hunt for the culprit behind a new synthetic drug called HFS, the initials of which cannot be explained in a family newspaper.

Their adventures aren’t just about solving crime — they’re also about reliving the past. In order to live up to their new identities, Schmidt and Jenko are forced to stay with Schmidt’s overbearing mother. He ends up experiencing a kind of psychological reversion complete with a host of his former teenage anxieties. They discover that things are dramatically different from what they expected, and they switch places in the social structure.

This is one of those special movies with surprising charm and clever commentaries and riffs on movie conventions and clichĂ©s. Action scenes where you’d expect spectacular explosions are diffused with dialogue about expectations and reality. While this kind of cleverness should be appreciated, it’s often so cerebral and ‘meta’ that the audience is not given the urge to laugh.

Our two heroes conduct an extended debate about whether it’s cool to use only one or rather both straps of a backpack. Funny, yes, but not funny ha-ha. This makes 21 Jump Street perhaps the smartest dumb movie that I’ve seen in a long while. The deadpan humour went a long way in my book.

Apart from that, there are some irksome problems. Yes, it’s true that Schmidt and Jenko are adults but if they’re pretending to be teenagers, it’s not a laughing matter when a teacher starts making sexual advances. People should know better than to think of this as comedy, especially screenwriter Michael Bacall who also has Project X and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for credits. It’s good that he had Phil Lord and Chris Miller directing. They previously were at the helm for the wonderfully playful animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

What was most distressing was the unnecessary violence. There didn’t need to be any blood whatsoever, let alone severed male body parts. This kind of extravagance is a blight on modern cinema, and it did much to spoil the film’s cleverness.