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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

21 Jump Street

When I heard that the late 80s TV show ‘21 Jump Street’ was being remade as a comedy starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, my heart sank. The original ‘21 Jump Street’ was a gritty, sometimes downright dark show about a police division made up of babyfaced officers who would go undercover to solve crimes in high schools. Ostensibly a show for kids, ‘21 Jump Street’ explored risky topics like racism, gangs, drugs, alcoholism, rape, homophobia, child abuse, and prostitution in a way that imparted lessons without being preachy, gory, or titillating, unlike modern-day police procedurals. And while it’s known as the show that launched Johnny Depp’s career, ‘21 Jump Street’ had a cast that would be considered extremely diverse even by today’s standards, where the four main officers were the racially ambiguous Depp, a black woman, a Vietnamese man, and a white man, who were supervised by a black captain.

With the issues facing high schoolers today, a modernized ‘21 Jump Street’ that retained the gritty tone of the original series and took an unflinching look inside America’s high schools seemed like fertile ground that could be the basis for several films. But instead, the ‘21 Jump Street’ movie that opens today has only two officers, both white men, and instead of using its premise as an opportunity to take a sober, possibly disturbing look at the lives of America’s teenagers, it’s only used for laughs. So when I sat down to watch ‘21 Jump Street’ I wasn’t just ready to hate this movie, I was eager to.

But instead, something funny happened. I found myself laughing. A lot.

The film opens in high school, where Schmidt (played by Jonah Hill) is a socially awkward nerd who’s picked on by a good-looking meathead jock named Jenko, played by Channing Tatum. Several years later, Schmidt and Jenko meet again in a police academy, where the two of them become an unlikely duo as Schmidt helps Jenko pass his exams while Jenko helps the pudgy Schmidt get in shape. After becoming officers, their youthful looks and immaturity get them transferred to the Jump Street program, where they’re sent into their former high school to find the source of a potentially lethal new drug.

So why does ‘21 Jump Street’ work so well? Much of the credit has to go to Tatum and Hill, who make a terrific odd couple. Schmidt is bumbling, cowardly, and socially clueless while Jenko is handsome, physically adept, and intellectually deficient, but their childlike enthusiasm for being police officers and the sweetness and vulnerability of their friendship makes them surprisingly endearing, even as they do wildly irresponsible things like beating up high school students or supplying kids with beer and marijuana for a rager Schmidt throws at his parents’ house.

The supporting cast outperforms across the board, including Ice Cube as the captain of Jump Street, James Franco’s younger brother Dave as the school cool kid, Rob Riggle as the PE teacher, Brie Larson as the down-to-earth girl Schmidt falls for, internet star Dax Flame as a helpful nerd, and Ellie Kemper as a teacher with the hots for Jenko. And along with cameos from the cast of the original TV show, the film acknowledges and laughs at the fact that it’s yet another in the long line of revamped 80s properties.

But ‘21 Jump Street’ is more than that, and as I watched the movie, it occurred to me that totally abandoning all but the kernel of the original concept was a pretty clever move. While the original show often had humor, it never mined an obvious idea that the movie embraces — that the Jump Street cops might actually relish the opportunity to return to high school to be the teenager they always wanted to be. While it’s sad to have lost all the things that made the original ‘21 Jump Street’ such a fascinating, groundbreaking series, it’s good to know that it definitely wasn’t for nothing.

‘21 Jump Street’ is rated R and opens today.