Starring: Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Ice Cube, Peter Stormare
Director: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Genre: Comedy, action
Running time: 120 minutes
Now showing at: Cinema Magic, Naalya and Cineplex Cinema at The Hub
The bromance that involves cracking down drug rings continues. Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are back as undercover detectives tasked to find the source of a drug at a college.
In short we have the same plot from 21 Jump Street, only that the pair is in college and not high school. Yet this seems to be the winning formula for directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller –changing very little about the movie but making it so interesting that audiences won’t be put off by it. So far, it has received rave reviews.
In the sequel, the undercover programme is located across the street from where it was in the first movie, on 22 Jump Street, hence the title. The duo still has to answer to Capt Dickson (Ice Cube), who is not too happy that he has to babysit what he calls overgrown adolescents, again. They enrol into a college where a drug called WHYPHY (sounds like Wi-Fi but really stands for Work Hard? Yes. Play Hard? Yes, clearly whoever came up with this was high on the stuff) is making rounds.
Their undercover work brings out the joke in Jenko and the poetry lover in Schmidt. Now, we have all watched enough college movies to know that these two areas don’t fall on the same social ladder so there is some tension in the bromance on that front. Then there is the drug supplier, who is as evasive as his name Ghost (Peter Stormare), who really brings out the point that this is not high school anymore, home.
Add this to self-deprecating humour (which gets a little raunchy for anyone with delicate sensibilities), the good chemistry on Tatum and Hill’s part (better than it was in the first movie) and the addition of some interesting characters and this makes for a fun movie to watch with friends.