TATUM & HILL TAKE ON 21 JUMP STREET

Surprisingly Cool Movie from a bad TV show

title: 21 JUMP STREET
year: 2012
cast: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum
rating: ***1/2

Forget the church and the address. This has little to do with the TV series about undercover cops posing as high school students – other than centering on undercover cops posing as high school students. The premise begins and ends there; the real stuff deals with the unlikely friendship between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum: in 2005 one was a high school nerd, the other a great looking popular jock. And now it’s 2012 and things have really changed. The geeks are cool and Hill fits right in with a group of politically-correct drug dealers who are the culprits, along with a band of rugged bikers, the duo must snare. But this plot thing is secondary to our underdog heroes back in high school, aided by a clever twist involving a name screw-up: Hill takes the easy classes and Tatum, not a smart cookie, joins the chemistry club. Each discover their own clues to find the supplier of a wonder drug with vivid and hilarious side effects – that we experience first hand! And after the hijinks have played out, including a wild house party, a car chase leads to a Tarantinoeque standoff with guns blazing at the prom (with an important cameo therein). But how the unlikely duo stick together through thick and thin... both gaining a brand new perspective on their former high school experience... is what really works – making for an iconic TV series reboot that, unlike most of its kind, really hits the mark.