Everyone bemoans the endless sequels and remakes, but occasionally a treasure like Phil Lord and Chris Miller's 21 Jump Street comes along that redeems the rehashing. Two incompetent cops, played by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, leap at their last chance to keep their badges by joining the undercover narcotics force headquartered at 21 Jump Street, where they are assigned to work undercover as high school students. Tatum and Hill complement each other as parts of opposite cliques in the school hierarchy they have to infiltrate. Commenting subtly and ironically on how school culture has changed since the '90s and, of course, since the '80s, when 21 Jump Street was a popular TV show, the story unfolds swiftly, playing deftly with the audience's expectations. Writers Hill and Michael Bacall cleverly mix pop culture references, wit, and vulgarity to transform what might have been a one-joke knock-off into a comic original.
