3 out of 4 stars Title 22 Jump Street Written by Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel and Rodney Rothman Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller Starring Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill Classification 14A Country USA Language English Year 2014 
 
 Movies that mine movie conventions for laughs are nothing new: The Oceans 11 series played playful homage to the old rat pack capers, the numerous Scary Movies skewered all of the standard horror tropes, Austin Powers was 007 with a twist. Even the specific concept of making fun of sequels while being a sequel has been done before in Scream 2, and that probably wasn't the first movie to make fun of coming second. The whole cinematic meta gimmick is so well established at this point that the next comedy frontier probably lies in figuring out how to be meta about being meta. It's enough to make your brain hurt, which, rest assured, 22 Jump Street will not. 
 
 "Do the same thing – everyone's happy," says Nick Offerman (back, like most of the supporting cast, as the mustachioed deputy police chief). And if you do the same thing and make it even funnier, well then right on bro! [Fist pump, chest bump, totally superfluous and expensive explosion sequence]. 
 
 Plot is even less essential the second time around. Our dynamic odd couple – Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) – are still partners in policing. Once again they get a mission to infiltrate a drug ring, only this time they're going undercover as college freshmen. (Because, you know, the idea of two men in their 30s posing as high school students is ridiculous.) A bunch of the movie's best jokes skewer the industry's habit of casting grown-ups as adolescents. Last time most of the "you-so-old" jabs landed on Tatum, who really could be 45. This time, Hill is the target. "Tell us about the war – any of them," says Mercedes (a scene-stealing Jillian Bell), the wisecracking roommate of Hill's love interest Maya (Amber Stevens). (Side note: one movie convention that goes unmocked is the tendency of pasty, pudgy male writer/actors to cast absurdly good looking women as their love interests. Ding, ding, ding, Jonah Hill.) 
 
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 College life, on the other hand, is milked for all it's worth. In one scene Jenko and Schmidt take a roll call of the must-have items for dorm life including a beanbag chair, disco light and "a hilarious T-shirt that signifies we drink alcohol." In another, the guys endure a night of initiation humiliation. Jenko fits in naturally with the beer-guzzling jocks, while Schmidt falls in with the pretentious art-student crowd. "We like to drink good wine and talk about important issues," says one wannabe-Sartre type. (If you didn't meet that guy at university, you probably were him). 
 
 In-jokes aside, the awesomeness of the movie is the chemistry between its leads, who go together like frat boys and dick jokes (22 Jump Street features plenty of both). Yes, the writing is clever, but much of the dialogue and physical comedy bits come down to delivery, chemistry and Hill and Tatum's ability to turn even the more juvenile gags (see: dick jokes) into hilariousness. Particularly in the comedy realm, showbiz goes through cool kid cycles – there was Wes Anderson collective, the Will Ferrell posse, Judd Apatow's gang, of which Hill is a member. That Stoner No. 3 from Knocked Up and the tank top from Step Up have become Hollywood's freshest comedy duo is impressive. That they're keeping it fresh in a sequel is as close to a cinematic miracle as a guy in a "Sun's out/Guns out" top to deserves to get. ||||| Could we all maybe take a small break from irony? 
 
 Very soon into "22 Jump Street," the police chief lays out the latest mission for his undercover cops - pretend to be students, and bust the pushers selling the latest designer drugs on campus. 
 
 Just like last time, they ask. 
 
 Just like last time, he says. 
 
 And that's mildly amusing — along with a few other nudge-nudge gags about how now they've got so much money in the budget, they're wasting it on things you can't even see, or that everything is always worse the second time around. 
 
 Except at what point is sarcasm just a cheap substitute for wit? Exactly when does joking about how all sequels are just lame, repetitive cash-grabs start to suggest that maybe yours is. too? 
 
 Actually, in this case, about 40 minutes in. 
 
 Still the stars have a nice rapport, and a few good running gags. And it all concludes with a hilarious, if literally last-minute, montage of all the sequels to come (including one in which a star is replaced due to "contract negotiations"). 
 
 The sort-of-new adventure brings back smart but schlubby Jonah Hill and buff but bovine Channing Tatum as a couple of narcs, this time assigned to college. Can they find the drug dealer who's killing kids? (Sure they can. Just like last time.) 
 
 But directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — who did the last "Jump Street" movie, as well as the sublimely superior "The Lego Movie" — keep it moving and occasionally weird (with a giddy drug trip, and a split-screen idea that seems like a nod to, of all things, "Pillow Talk"). 
 
 Which isn't that odd after all, because the script — by Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel and Rodney Rothman — has at least one wicked new idea, which is to tease out the gay subtext barely buried in Hollywood's new bromantic comedies. 
 
 So Hill and Tatum are partners in every sense but sexually, squabbling like a cranky married couple over who's clingy or who's insensitive. And when Tatum befriends a fellow jock at college, their conversations are ripe with innocently carnal innuendo. 
 
 They're just, you know, not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that. After all, as the sweetly dim Tatum insists, he's no homophone. 
 
 All of this is funny (and proof again of the quiet career intelligence of Tatum, who knows when it's smart to play dumb, and is canny enough to acknowledge some cross-gender appeal.) 
 
 But there are a couple of missteps, some accidental (who could have known this was not a good time to premiere a movie with a Maya Angelou joke?) and some just typical Hollywood — like having a gorgeous college student fall for Hill for no good reason at all. 
 
 And although Groundlings vet Jillian Bell turns out to be a very welcome surprise as the suitemate-from-hell, there's an awful lot of comedy shtick that feels warmed over — silly car chases, comic fights and Ice Cube cursing unimaginatively as their cranky captain. 
 
 Tatum continues to charm as an actor (showing here, if nothing else, that he's a hell of a good sport) and Hill gets in some nice, half-muttered weirdness as his insecure partner. And that final-credits montage is terrific (I really want to see the one where they're in dance school). 
 
 But I just wish they occasionally taken their comedy a little more seriously, instead of rushing to make fun of it before we did. Sarcasm is fine in small doses. But when you really start pumping irony, sometimes the meta just gets, well — meh. 
 
 
 
 Ratings note: The film contains strong language, substance abuse and sexual references. 
 
 '22 Jump Street' (R) Sony (112 min.) 
 
 Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. With Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill. Now playing in New Jersey. 
 
 
 
 ★ ★ ½ 
 
 ||||| If the 2012 film 21 Jump Street was less a remake of the earnest late ‘80s cop show than a good-natured goof on it, the sequel, 22 Jump Street, goes even further in the direction of unrealism: It’s full-bore camp — a buddy-cop burlesque. The directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, are fresh off this year’s The Lego Movie, and they’re no longer just filmmakers — they’re meta-filmmakers. They create almost nothing from scratch; their talent is for juggling tropes. They hit the same jokes over and over, but they’re smart enough to know which ones will play the fifth, fifteenth, and fiftieth time. Here, the overarching comic idea — the Alpha Gag — is that men of action are, like, seriously into each other. You’re meant to cry out, “That’s so gay!” — but with delight instead of derision. The homo jokes are happily progressive. 
 
 Undercover detectives Jonah Hill (Schmidt) and Channing Tatum (Jenko) are two years older, which means they’re unlikely college kids instead of unlikely high schoolers. Last time, they set out to trace the origin of a designer drug that was wacking kids out. This time, they set out to trace the origin of a designer drug that’s wacking kids out. But 22 Jump Street is the type of movie in which before you can say, “It’s a repeat of last time!” Hill says, “It’s a repeat of last time!” and both Nick Offerman (as “Deputy Chief Hardy") and Ice Cube (as the prodigiously surly “Captain Dickson”) give nudge-nudge-wink-wink speeches on the subject of the task force’s bigger budget. 
 
 The directors and screenwriters (three credited: Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel, and Rodney Rothman, with Bacall and Jonah Hill getting a nod for the “story,” such as it is) presume the audience reads box-office reports and is schooled in the idea of the almighty Hollywood “franchise.” They get to poke fun at sequels and simultaneously make sequel money, which is a great frigging gig if you ask me. 
 
 The first half of 22 Jump Street had my preview audience in stitches, but I laughed more at The Fault in Our Stars; the movie was like a Bob Hope–Bing Crosby picture if Hope weren’t funny and Bing didn’t sing. An opening chase is a mistimed shambles — the relentless quips slow it down. And it doesn’t help that the film sets a record for poorly timed jokes. Early on, someone does a Tracy Morgan impression. Then Schmidt professes an enthusiasm for poetry and his (improbably gorgeous) new girlfriend (Amber Stevens) starts calling him “Maya Angelou.” The worst moment is when Tatum’s Jenko righteously explains that “faggot” is an unacceptable slur on gays. It’s as if Marty McFly came back from the future and sabotaged the script. 
 
 But either the movie got better or I got worn down. Maybe both. Jillian Bell — best known for the series Workaholics — materializes as the contemptuous roommate of Schmidt’s girlfriend and delivers a great, rapid-fire series of deadpan putdowns. An agreeably low-key actor named Wyatt Russell plays the golden-locked football jock Zook, who takes an instant shine to Tatum’s Jenko. They give each other moist stares and marvel at how in sync they are. They sit by the goalpost at night and call each other “bro” and “dude.” (I thought they were going to sing a duet.) Ice Cube throws a show-stopping tantrum. There’s a fun shot of the campus at dawn, when rumpled, obviously hung-over young men and women pass one another on the common holding their shoes, heading wearily for their own dorm rooms. At its best, 22 Jump Street is less an action comedy than a loosely plotted revue, and though it’s not as witty as either Joe Dante’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch or Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz (in which the directors evinced genuine love for their chosen genres), it’s sure as hell better than a straight buddy-cop sequel. And the ultrameta epilogue (no spoilers) is irresistible — it sends you home on a cloud. 
 
 Tatum is a likably modest hunk and a deft comedian, but I’m on the fence about Hill. He so transparently wants to be regarded as a great actor rather than a great clown that he weighs the movie down. His brooding, paranoid persona worked in This Is the End because he seemed to be poking fun at himself. Here, he just seems … brooding and paranoid. The chip on his shoulder that’s visible off-camera is starting to show up on the screen and he should be careful before it grows into a Quasimodo hump of unpleasantness. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites.
– Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are back as partners-in-crime-fighting in 22 Jump Street, but rather than go undercover as high-schoolers to infiltrate a drug ring, this time around they're going undercover as college students. How does the sequel stand up to the first installment? Read on. "That Stoner No. 3 from Knocked Up and the tank top from Step Up have become Hollywood’s freshest comedy duo is impressive," writes Courtney Shea at the Globe and Mail. "That they’re keeping it fresh in a sequel is ... close to a cinematic miracle." The writing is clever and the stars' chemistry is "awesomeness." The film pokes "its R-rated finger" at everything from sequels to its stars. It's "a solidly implausible story, sight gags galore, endless jokes for the two new freshmen to go sophomoric, all unfolding at breakneck speed," writes Betsy Sharkey for the Los Angeles Times. Put it all together and it's a "a raucous, raunchy, irreverent, imperfect riot." Oh, and keep an eye out for the scene-stealing Jillian Bell. As David Edelstein writes at Vulture, "They get to poke fun at sequels and simultaneously make sequel money, which is a great frigging gig if you ask me." The first half "had my preview audience in stitches," though Edelstein wasn't as entertained. "But either the movie got better or I got worn down." He praises Bell, too, and notes "the ultrameta epilogue (no spoilers) is irresistible—it sends you home on a cloud." But Stephen Whitty at the Star-Ledger finds missteps and notes the sequel jokes are only "mildly amusing." The film's best idea "is to tease out the gay subtext barely buried in Hollywood's new bromantic comedies." Overall, "sarcasm is fine in small doses. But when you really start pumping irony, sometimes the meta just gets, well—meh."