Bryan Creason

Entertainment Editor

   21 Jump Street wasn’t always a really funny movie starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. No, it used to be a pretty successful crime-show about youthful-looking cops going undercover as high school students. The show was lauded for taking on issues that were controversial at the time, such as AIDS, hate crimes, and homophobia. While the film loses the lessons and replaces them with a couple of explosions, this movie is one of the better comedies released recently.

    The film starts off with a flashback to 2005, with our main characters Morton Schmidt (Hill) and Greg Jenko (Tatum). Jenko is the stereotypical jock, while Schmidt is an intellectual loser. Jumping forward to present day, they meet each other again at the police academy, and become friends as they help each other pass. After graduating and flubbing a drug arrest, the pair are sent off to a revived specialty division on 21 Jump Street. There they meet Captain Dickson, who gives them their orders to go undercover at a high school to find the supplier of a new drug which is taking the school by storm. Schmidt and Jenko find that high school has changed, with Jenko now the loser and Schmidt popular.

    The film is filled to the brim with laughs. Be it the trippy explanation of how the new synthetic drug works or when Jenko develops an affinity for chemistry lab-made explosives, the film hardly gives you a chance to catch your breath. When Jenko and Schmidt move in to Schmidt’s parents’ place, they experience the horror of childhood photos. Schmidt puts it best: “It’s like I died and this is a shrine to me.”

    All in all, much of the humor is categorized as adult and is pretty inappropriate, but the comedy comes together and leaves you laughing as the credits roll. This is one film that deserves a well-written sequel.