- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
91Underneath, 21 Jump Street is a riot of risks that pay off, the biggest of which might be handing Tatum funny business.
-
90Jonah Hill is masterful at delivering an absurd story with so much sweetness, the nonsense ceases to get in the way.
-
88The funniest movie I've seen in more than a year.
-
88We have lots of terminology for what happens when two male stars appear to have the platonic hots for each other. The genre is called bromance. The feelings are bromantic. The orientation is bromosexuality. What Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum have in 21 Jump Street scrambles, transcends, and explodes all of that.
-
88This is the rare breed of Hollywood studio production that has the brash spirit of an independent picture and the sharp wit of a stand-up comic.
-
83This movie embraces everything that should make it lousy, calling out itself for aping the source's bad ideas then flipping the script with meta precision.
-
80In its outrageous way, 21 Jump Street has real laughs.
-
80Miller and Lord clearly understand the push-and-pull and hyper-competitiveness that make guy friendships both complex and stupid. That it comes to life so fully in 21 Jump Street is what gives the film an endearing, punch-you-in-the-arm-because-I-like-you-man charm.
-
80Without a doubt, stupid, but it's willfully stupid, built in the comic style of "The Hangover" and "Due Date." Better yet, it also is genuinely funny, which is the point.
-
8021 Jump Street has that "Anchorman" experimental-chaos vibe, with all the hit-and-miss moments that implies. It's completely lunatic and sort of a mess. It's also the funniest high-school comedy to come out of Hollywood in ages.
-
80Not since Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg teamed up in "The Other Guys" has an onscreen pairing proved as comically rewarding as the inspired partnership of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.
-
75This film is even better if you come in with no spoilers and low expectations.
-
75He's not in Mark Wahlberg's league, and 21 Jump Street isn't quite as funny as "The Other Guys," but by lampooning himself here, Tatum has bought himself a grace period to grow in.
-
75The dialogue is fast-paced and full of pop-culture references. It all makes for an entertaining blend of buddy-cop action and irreverent teen-comedy satire.
-
75Like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Holliday before him, Tatum is sublime at playing dumb (as a dim pretty boy, he seems to be channeling Brad Pitt in "Burn After Reading"), just as Hill shrewdly deploys his body mass for maximum physical comedy (even slimmed down, with an Oscar nomination under that tightened belt, he carries himself with a fat man's comically elephantine grace).
-
75Are we always still in high school in our heads? 21 Jump Street thinks so. And Hill and Tatum are just the crazy-ass comedy team to prove it.
-
75Whatever you call 21 Jump Street, this potty-mouthed and drug-laced reimagining of the 1980s TV show has one of the highest laughs-per-minute ratios since the "Naked Gun" films.
-
75The drug humor in 21 Jump Street carries its own distinction, in that it's actually humor.
-
75The movie has entertaining cameos, too, especially one by Holly Robinson Peete. At 23, she played Officer Judy Hoffs on the TV show. At 48, she plays … Officer Judy Hoffs, the oldest undercover cop on Jump Street. Absurd? Of course. But pretty funny, too.
-
75One of the pleasures of 21 Jump Street is that the screenplay by Michael Bacall and Jonah Hill is happy to point out all of its improbabilities; the premise is preposterous to begin with, and they run with that.
-
75Like many almost-great comedies, 21 Jump Street is frontloaded with the best go-for-broke gags and lines.
-
Mar 19, 201270The devil-may-care attitude is what makes 21 Jump Street so entertaining.
-
7021 Jump Street isn't a wild, fresh reinvention of the movie-cliché-spoofing genre - this isn't "Airplane!" we're talking about - but it's also not a drearily overfamiliar retread of it.
-
70It wants to be fun and, to a perhaps surprising extent, it is. Largely forsaking the sweet multiculturalism of the original for white-dude bromance, and completely abandoning earnest teenagers-in-crisis melodrama in favor of crude, aggressive comedy, this 21 Jump Street is an example of how formula-driven entertainment can succeed.
-
70The project loses traction toward the end, as the picture strains to become a full-blooded action film - the very thing it spends the rest of its time mocking. And yet 21 Jump Street earns my genial nod because of its limber, 120-IQ take on the whole notion of movie revivals.
-
70For now, 21 Jump Street is a small puff of fresh air simply because it's not, like umpteen other releases coming down the pike, based on a comic-book series.
-
70Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller get nearly everything -- the tone, the self-referential nods to the shoe and the dead-solid-perfect surprises -- just right.
-
70It has a bad, slapstick first act but by midpoint becomes strangely compelling, tapping into the fantasy of reliving one's high-school years (which did a number on us all) and getting it right.
-
Mar 5, 201270By casting Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as fish-out-of-water buffoons, the irreverent result feels fresher than most '80s-show reboots, effectively flipping the address Johnny Depp made famous.
-
67It's a deeply uneven film that can't decide if it's a satire, a joke, a thriller or a heartstring-tugger, and in dithering in its tone and its aims it ultimately turns out to be none of the above.
-
67It's more consistently amusing and inspired than an adaptation of an '80s TV show has any right to be.
-
63Some of the funniest scenes belong to Ice Cube's "angry black captain" who goes on profane rants that would make Samuel L. Jackson proud.
-
60With Hill on co-scripting duties with Scott Pilgrim scribe Michael Bacall, 21 Jump Street was always going to live or die by its gags. Fortunately, it boasts that sweet-yet-dirty comedy that Hill revels in.
-
60This cheerfully chaotic, gleefully vulgar action-comedy retread of the old television series has box-office success written all over it, and where's the harm? It's irresistibly funny until it isn't.
-
60Through it all, Tatum and Hill are totally winning.
-
60The longer this "Abbott and Costello's Lethal Weapon" goes on, the more the fun dissipates - until a queasily violent climax, which, naturally, fully embraces genre stereotypes rather than dismantling them.
-
60Though these mismatched cops bounce well off each other, Tatum, in his first comedic lead role, is the better performer, both more riotous and affecting.
-
Mar 18, 201250Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) seem to be after the gentle irreverence of David Gordon Green's buddy flick "Pineapple Express," but without his sensitivity and attention to character the movie quickly grows monotonous.
-
50Look for a cameo by a movie star whose initials are J.D.
-
50A try-anything, fitfully amusing muddle that wears its mocking cynicism a bit too proudly.
-
50Not that anyone was asking for a reboot of the series that is perhaps best remembered as the launching pad for Johnny Depp's career, but here it comes anyway. The film will probably gain several points on the likability scale for its sheer unexpectedness and modest ambitions.