21 Jump Street

I’m Irish therefore it is in my genes to have a cracking sense of humour. I tend to find everything funny no matter how inappropriate, childish or sarcastic it may seem to others but even I find it bizarre to admit that I generally don’t enjoy comedies. I would venture to the cinema to watch no more than a couple each year – for every Easy A there is a This Means War and for every The Guard there is Nicolas Cage.

I had absolutely no knowledge of 21 Jump Street save for the fact that it starred Channing Tatum (who is so hot right now) which was quite frankly (and completely unashamedly) enough for me.

PLOT: Jenko (Channing Tatum) is a dumb but muscular cop who happens to be partners with the smart but nerdy Schmidt (Jonah Hill). The two graduates from the class of 2005 go undercover in a local high school in order to discover who is dealing drugs to the students. The prom king becomes the outcast. The nerd becomes the cool kid. The sequel will take place in college. END PLOT

The plot of 21 Jump Street is standard fare but the film is fully aware of this with the Captain’s “recycling shit from the 1980’s speech”. 21 Jump Street is one of those films which isn’t about the plot. It is about the execution.

One of the main reasons I don’t watch many comedies is that nine times out of ten all the best parts are in the trailer – with 21 Jump Street that is not the case as I giggled through the entire film.

Some of the laughs were silly but the vast majority were because of some ridiculously funny one liners – the Korean Jesus, fuck you science and the tights/skinny jeans moments had me in stitches.

Channing Tatum has suddenly become Channing Tatum! How did this reasonably talented, reasonably good looking, reasonable substitute if Ryan Gosling doesn’t answer the phone dude get to be everywhere? It turns out that he plays the dumb idiot very well.

The awful trailer for The Sitter was enough to make me dislike Jonah Hill but he was also very funny and had great chemistry with Tatum.

The supporting cast of Dave Franco, Ice Cube et al were all very strong – there was no weak link with the casting.

The set pieces were fun and parodied standard action clichés such as randomly exploding vehicles very well.  The tone of the film always remained light hearted.

21 Jump Street announced the premise for its sequel during the last scene and although I hate it when films end with a “next time, if we were make enough money this time” I didn’t care.

As I am not a big watcher of comedy I tend to either love them or hate them – for me it is a genre where there is no middle ground. If someone told me that 21 Jump Street was a comedy which actually delivered laughs I wouldn’t have believed them and the film gets an 8/10. I am trying to reign in just how much I loved it.