“My Name Jeff” That one line alone, in the trailer, has had me in tears since I first saw it. I even went so far as to make it my text message alert on my phone just to annoy my wife. A few years ago you may not have thought of Channing Tatum as a comedy actor, but the hilarious dynamic between him and Jonah Hill in the “Jump Street” movies, is undeniable. When I first heard they were making “21 Jump Street” into a movie my immediate reaction was a familiar one, “Hollywood is out of ideas… still”. It wasn’t until the red band trailer for that movie came out that I actually changed my tune a little bit. The scene where Channing Tatum is writing “4’s” all over the whiteboard and talking about radioactive spiders at a mile a minute, only to throw down the marker and yell “fuck you science”, gave me a nice laugh, but not enough to go see it in the theaters. However, a friend of mine did go see it and he highly recommended we go check it out, but I was still apprehensive, so we waited. Upon it’s release on blu-ray, I picked it up and watched it immediately. It instantly became one of my favorite comedy movies of the last 5 or so years. Maybe it was just because my expectations were so low, but to this day I still watch it at least once a month while falling asleep. Fast forward to this year, and the announcement of “22 Jump Street”. From the very first trailer and the “My name Jeff” line, I was hooked. Hell, even before the first trailer I knew I would go out to the theater to see this once, since I loved the first one so much. And that’s exactly what we did this weekend. The story is basically the exact same as the first one, but the movie is totally aware of that and discusses it multiple times throughout the flick. It’s that self-awareness that actually makes it work, to a degree. At a certain point the joke begins to bite itself in the ass, but it didn’t go on too much longer than necessary. They do change things up a bit towards the end to give it just enough of a plot twist to make it not seem like it’s the exact same movie, but either way I didn’t care. The change of scenery to college and the dynamic between the characters flip-flopping was enough of a change for me. They obviously had some more money this time around, so the set pieces were grander and the chases were bigger, but at the core if the movie, it’s all about the dynamic between Hill and Tatum. I enjoyed every minute of this movie and would probably go see it in the theater again, if I had time. Even the credit sequence at the very end was incredible. I still think “21 Jump Street” was better, overall, but this was not far behind at all, which is saying a lot for a comedy sequel. I don’t think this is the last time we’re going to see Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in a “Jump Street” movie, considering the box office haul from this one opening weekend. It’s only a matter of how many times can they do the same thing before people don’t want to watch anymore… But at this point, I’d absolutely go watch another one of these flicks. Did you see 22 Jump Street this weekend? What did you think?
