The Jumpers Are Back

Schmidt and Jenko are back, kids, in 22 Jump Street.

Well, yeah, OK...they came back this past summer, but whaddya want – the blockbuster just opened in Peru.

Anyway, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are back in their winning roles as inappropriately aged undercover cops in this sequel to the commercial/critical success that was 21 Jump Street, the 2012 reboot of the late-’80s TV drama that starred Johnny Depp, Holly Robinson, and Richard Grieco.

And, lemme tell ya, it is the most homoerotically charged, self-aware, self-referential, funny bromance of the year.

Trust.

22 Jump Street once again has partners Schmidt and Jenko on a case that calls for a ridikolous set-up, this time as covert freshmen at Metro City State, even though they are pushing 30 (which the story, once again dreamt up in part by Hill, actually has Schmidt turning at the end of the second act).

Indeed, it is off to college for the pair this time around, thanks in no small measure to the success of their own again-all-odds-and-in-spite-of-themselves big-hit reboot of the 21 Jump Street program. Ah, but this time, they’re across the road, at 22 Jump St., and, maybe...just maybe, next year, they’ll be back on their original side of the street, at 23 Jump Street.

Which they will be.

The boys’ mission is simple, at least on paper: They need to go and infiltrate MCS – a taller order than last time ’round ’cause they look older now – and ID and locate the source of WHYPHY, a new drug that has begun killing kids on campus.

Except, of course, that because bumbling Schmidt and Jenko aren’t the most focused, this will prove most difficult as the former gets distracted wooing a hot, art-y girl he later will learn he probably shouldn’t have, and the latter gets wrapped up living out the college-jock experience he never had with his new BFF Zook (Wyatt Russell). That they spend the better part of the two-hour-on-the-dot movie working on their relationship – Shades of Unwitting Ambiguously Gay Duo-ness Alert! – helps us laugh, but it don’t help them appear anywhere as bright as they fancy themselves to be.

22 Jump Street – the powers that be blatantly tell us via our two central characters’ own meta admissions – is just a more expensive, gratuitous follow-up to its predecessor (itself a surprising lucky fluke).

In other words, a totally unoriginal flick.

Except one that is complete original in its smart and inspired irreverence.

My Rating ***

Photo: Sony Pictures.