If the objective of this poor excuse for a movie was to re-invent its 1980 predecessor in a manner that would be entertaining for anyone with a sense of humor unrelated to ‘dick-sucking’ jokes, then it receives a failing grade.

Upon graduating from police-college, Officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) take to the parks as ‘bad-ass’ bicycle-cops to handle serious felonies, like reprimanding a boy for feeding the ducks.  Their first real attempt at making an arrest was a complete debacle, and the one felon they were able to detain was let go because Officer Jenko recited a vulgar version of the Miranda rights, “you have the right to remain silent, motherfucker”.

Thereafter, they were re-assigned as under-cover cops to a high school on 21 Jump Street to investigate the supply of a new drug that has been circulating the school. After a few comedic screw-ups and blatant disregard for their instructions, they were fired as cops but still continued to work on the case, and eventually got to the bottom of it.

The only element of this plot that wasn’t completely predictable was the dramatic role-reversal when Schmidt and Jenko returned to the world of high school: Jenko, the over-glorified and rather unintelligent jock, was only able to make friends with the chemistry nerds, whereas Schmidt, or the ‘not-so-slim’ Slim Shady look-alike and full-time loser, found an in with the popular kids at 21 Jump Street. Oh, wait. I lied. That was also completely predictable!

It was basically Miss Congeniality jacked up on testosterone and borderline homophobic humour. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time our unusual comedic Tatum-Hill duo made reference to ‘sucking dick’, I’d probably have enough money to make the college-themed sequel to this movie. This movie left me with two thoughts. Firstly, why didn’t Channing Tatum take off his shirt in a feature length movie? Secondly, Jonah Hill, or whatever is left of him, should be ashamed of himself.

– Ronnie Ali