Animators Phil Lord and Chris Miller sure know how to do their stuff. I mean after seeing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and the LEGO Movie, I never in a million years thought that they could enter the live action territory and make those films just as good as their animated ones. Based on the hit 80s crime drama series of the same name that put Johnny Depp on the map (though for the most part, it has newer characters and newer storylines, but set in the same chronology with the series with similarities in the plot and concept), we get to see ladies man Channing Tatum (Magic Mike, G.I. Joe etc.) team up with talented writer and comedian Jonah Hill (Superbad, Get Him To The Greek etc.) to play the buddy cop duo of Greg Jenko and Morton Schmidt respectively. So let's take a look at these films and see if Lord and Miller can make a great live action film as they can make great animated films:
21
So to begin with, Jenko and Schmidt are both enemies with one being an addict to Eminem and also a stereotypical nerd and the other being a stereotypical jock. Both of them are rejected to going to the prom due to one having low grades and the other getting rejected by his potential prom date (you can pretty much guess which one is which in this scenario just by seeing who the main stars are). Years go by and the two meet again at the Metropolitan City Police Department Academy and become fast friends due to one helping with the study side of things and the other helping in the physical side of things (again, very obvious on which one is which in this scenario). They graduate together and they hope to have a great career, but instead they get the dull job of park patrol. However after arresting a potential drug dealer (who is forced to be released due to the wording of the Miranda rights coming out wrong), they get their big break when they get transferred to a special division called 21 Jump Street. There they meet the guy in charge Captain Dickson (played by the no nonsense and cool hip hop artist turned actor, Ice Cube) who tells them and the other new recruits about the work that the division do which involves infiltrating (as my grandparents would say) educational establishments, but mainly high schools. Jenko and Schmidt are assigned to stop a new drug known as H.F.S (Holy F**king S**t), which is being sold in a local high school and they use undercover names Brad and Doug McQuaid which as you would expect, has them be brothers in a way. This was a good film in my opinion. It was funny, stayed true to the source material (evening giving Depp and Peter DeLuise uncredited cameos), has a plentiful of action and fast paced movement and I very much enjoyed it. Looks like whatever Lord and Miller are given when it comes to making films, they can do it well (unlike say I don't know, Michael Bay). 9/10
22
So at the end of the first film, its hinted that another film would be coming our way and what a shock, we get the next one. Now interesting fact, Lord and Miller were working on the LEGO Movie while making this film and I'm guessing that because they were working with Hill and Tatum, they decided to give them a role each in that film with Hill being Hal Jordan/Green Lantern and Tatum being Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman and the relationship they have in that film, I could say is very reminiscent from this series in that Hill acts as the annoying and useless character whereas Tatum acts as the more heroic but sometimes arrogant character. But that aside, let's talk about this film. So we begin with a brief summary of what happened in the last film as if it was like watching an episode of a show which I actually quite liked. Jenko and Schmidt are back on the streets finding drug dealers and despite being said they would go to college, they instead do online college which they use to help find the drug dealers in the area. However when they actually find the dealers and fail to capture them, they are then sent back to Dickson's division which ironically is now located at 22 Jump Street where for real this time, they are sent to go undercover in a college to find the supplier of a new drug called "WHYPHY" which killed a student who bought it on campus. With only a photo to help them, they must find this drug dealer before WHYPHY goes viral. Now I was watching a number of trailers and ads for this film and I honestly thought that they were going in the route of how Hangover 2 went with the entire film being a rehash of the first film, just with slight but significant changes to things. It is a bit similar to the first film, but isn't an entire rehash which I was very happy about. Its a fun, fast and funny rollercoaster with lots of action, fast paced movement, college humour and even some unintentional Break the 4th wall jokes on the budget and the possibility of there being more films and even an entire franchise (something of which was touched upon greatly during the credits). It even has some more cameos from actors of the TV show and presumably celebrity fans of it too. This is the next best summer blockbuster of this year so far in my opinion. 9/10
So after all that, I think Lord and Miller can do anything. The writing of both films is great, the jokes and comedy is great, the action is great and even the moments that you'd see in a typical buddy cop film is great. Of course there is a few cringe worthy moments in both films, but not too much to the point that it puts you off from seeing it. 9/10
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