21 Jump Street

Winner of several imaginary literary and filmmaking awards.

It's a good thing 21 Jump Street is funny, because in terms of pure filmmaking, it is a near-embarrassment. Directed by two men whose primary claim to fame is the animated flick Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, this live-action semi-spoof update of the '80s TV series is injected with a heavy dose of that film's boundless screwball zeal. It works in terms of content; the humor here is imbued with a gonzo invention that feels almost spontaneous. But in terms of style, the filmmakers can barely make a two-character dialogue scene feel coherent.

If you are even remotely familiar with the original TV show, you can guess the central plot here -- underachieving, relatively young-looking cops are assigned to go undercover at a local high school to bust youth crime. Of course, in this case the focus is shifted from the broader ensemble and placed squarely on Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, who continue the Apatow-inspired trend of buddy-comedy romps centered on man-boys who somehow amount to more than the sum of their parts. They are former high school enemies now teamed on the police force as some sort of cruel joke. Hill is the brainy, conscientious police nerd and Tatum is the hulking, dim-witted Adonis. The coupling is predictably odd, but the actors work well together, with Hill toning down his comic extremes to deliver a real character and Tatum shedding his brooding exterior to have some fun. They are surrounded by a great supporting cast, from Ice Cube as the police captain to Rob Riggle as an inappropriate high school football coach to  Dave Franco (James's little brother) as a tree-hugging genius who also happens to be the head of the school's drug ring.

The notion of remaking the straight-laced cop drama that put Johnny Depp on the map might seem ludicrous, and this new version aims to remind the audience just how ludicrous it is on a moment-to-moment basis. 21 Jump Street isn't as direct and over-the-top a spoof of its source material as, say, The Brady Bunch Movie from the early '90s, but it does frequently call attention to the oddity of its own existence. It's a welcome flaunting of the fourth wall, and it's not surprising the screenplay was penned by Michael Bacall, who contributed to the endlessly self-referential Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

If only the remainder of the film had been handled with the same giddy inspiration. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were plucked from the animation ranks to make their live-action directorial debut, and their predilection for elaborate random side-gags and goofy set pieces is at once a blessing and a curse. On the rare occasion when their colorful stylistic invention aids the story -- as in a recurring bit that highlights the various stages of drug-influenced euphoria -- the style fits the film like a glove. But most of the time the notion of working in live action feels like a hindrance on the directors, and the result is a cacophony of incoherent sequences that might work independently as screwball episodes but fall to pieces in the larger context of the film, regardless of how "punk" the filmmakers intend to be. The end result is certainly funny enough to serve its primary purpose, but far too messy to stand out as a great comedy.

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