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<\/a>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong> <\/p>\nJonathan 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. <\/em> <\/p>\n
Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant<\/a>. <\/p>\n
21 Jump Street<\/strong><\/p>\n
When I heard that the late 80s TV show \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 was being remade as a comedy starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, my heart sank. The original \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 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, \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 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\u2019s known as the show that launched Johnny Depp\u2019s career, \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 had a cast that would be considered extremely diverse even by today\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
With the issues facing high schoolers today, a modernized \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 that retained the gritty tone of the original series and took an unflinching look inside America\u2019s high schools seemed like fertile ground that could be the basis for several films. But instead, the \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 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\u2019s teenagers, it\u2019s only used for laughs. So when I sat down to watch \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 I wasn\u2019t just ready to hate this movie, I was eager to.<\/p>\n
But instead, something funny happened. I found myself laughing. A lot. <\/p>\n
The film opens in high school, where Schmidt (played by Jonah Hill) is a socially awkward nerd who\u2019s 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\u2019re sent into their former high school to find the source of a potentially lethal new drug. <\/p>\n
So why does \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 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\u2019 house. <\/p>\n
The supporting cast outperforms across the board, including Ice Cube as the captain of Jump Street, James Franco\u2019s 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\u2019s yet another in the long line of revamped 80s properties.<\/p>\n
But \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 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 \u2014 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\u2019s sad to have lost all the things that made the original \u201821 Jump Street\u2019 such a fascinating, groundbreaking series, it\u2019s good to know that it definitely wasn\u2019t for nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201821 Jump Street\u2019 is rated R and opens today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}