Why did I wait so long to watch
22 Jump Street!?
21 Jump Street is a hilarious film, and considering the same directors made
The Lego Movie (which is AWESOME), it’s absolutely asinine I’m just now viewing it.
22 Jump Street is the same thing as
21 Jump Street, only better…a lot better. It’s a stream of hilarity, full of slapstick, self-referential humor, college humor (not the actual website), black comedy, blue comedy, black and blue comedy (if that’s even a thing). The film’s humor is absolute gold; one scene involves Schmidt (Jonah Hill) bragging to an impressed Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) about getting laid, only for a later scene to reveal it’s Dickson’s own daughter. A fairly overused gag in comedy, yet the execution is spot-on brilliant; keeping it hidden with a multitude of other jokes until the actual punchline (resulting in a major laughing fit). So many effective jokes are placed into the film; using such variety at a swift progression, giving the viewers just enough time to grasp one before another’s thrown right in. Such execution allows jokes which would otherwise be stale to feel refreshing.
The self-referential humor has been upped about 200% here, to the point of reaching The Muppets level. One scene involves Schmidt and Jenko (Channing Tatum) escaping from the bad guys via car chase, only they can’t hit anything since it’ll cost “the organization” money (an earlier scene has Dickson explaining they've spent the entire budget on previous car chases and their fancy headquarters); resulting in them trying in vain not to hit anything despite “it looking really cool”. The chase sequence also involves a continuous drive past the “Benjamin Hill’s School of Film Studies”. Is it an unnecessary joke the majority of its target viewers won’t get? Most likely. Did I greatly appreciate and laugh at it? Absolutely! Oh and by the way, the laughs continue even as the credits roll; in fact some of its best jokes are DURING the credits. Of course, humor is a highly subjective concept, and not everyone will appreciate 22 Jump Street the way I did…but if you can’t find this film even remotely funny, then something is very wrong with your sense of humor.
