21 Jump Street

For some reason I thought this was critically panned, then found out that it did pretty well with both reviewers and the audience. Maybe I got it mixed up with an Adam Sandler piece of celluloid dog vomit. I never saw the TV show, which is usually a good thing when they make a movie out of the TV show, because I don’t have any expectations. All I really knew about it was that this was the part that really set Johnny Depp on the road to stardom, so thanks for that, whoever produced the series.

I’d have to call it uneven. There are some very funny bits, and then some that just don’t come off. But some of it is pretty sly, and I appreciate that. My favorite bit: during the mandatory car chase not once, but three times, we are set up for a big explosion. Like, when the gas tanker truck is perforated and starts spewing gasoline. They drive on … and look back … and it doesn’t explode. “I really thought that was going to explode,” Jonah Hill says to Channing Tatum. That’s funnier than if it had exploded. We finally get the explosion we have been promised near the end, after a second car chase in stretch limos (not something I’d seen before), when we get a huge fireball. Another ongoing gag: a high school student these incompetent cops are supposed to be infiltrating points out that they look too old.

Since I hadn’t seen the TV show, I didn’t get some of the inside jokes, but apparently almost all the cast had cameo roles in this one, including near the end, Johnny Depp himself.