22 Jump Street

Unrepentantly unashamed of its recycled ripple effect, yet excelling where Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me did not, 22 Jump Street revisits 21 Jump Street's plot, counting on the strength of its reflexes to convincingly entertain, Hill (Schmidt) and Tatum (Jenko) demonstrating that they've still got it, poetry, football, college, weak on plot but undeniably hilarious, their humouristic confidence reliably overpowering the need to expand, not that they don't bromantically exemplify, how to sustain a flexible working partnership.

The bromance, introduced at the outset with a comparative illustration of both yin, and yang, holds the film together, breaking away to adhesively unite, strategizing football connections in the meantime, relationships, parenting, age.

Giving minor characters from the first film a larger role in the second can work, and it works well in 22 Jump Street, Ice Cube (Captain Dickson) furiously losing it at one point, Tatum's additions to the motif, a side-splitting shining moment.

Hill's best scene comes in the form of an improv slam poetry reaction.

I'm wondering if they wrote his poem beforehand, in which case he should be applauded for his ability to believably pretend to be improving, or, in the case that he did improv his poem, he should be seriously applauded for delivering some successful semantic syllabic breakdowns, immediate and inferential, confident and spry.

Either way, he makes a bold fashion statement.

Is 22 Jump Street a left wing film?

The yin seems to be represented by the more sensitive thoughtful Schmidt, Jenko representing the yang.

But equating sensitivity with the left and aggression with the right is somewhat stereotypical, an organized left often functioning highly combatively, the right seeming quite timid when living outside its comfort zone for extended periods.

What I've just described somewhat reflects Jenko's role in the film, as he is quite timid when interacting with the more intellectually gifted Schmidt, yet, when it comes to applying what he's learned in his human sexuality course, he isn't afraid to defend groups traditionally ignored by the right, making a great point about the problems associated with silence, such actions breaking him away from his social comfort zone, which I would be guilty of examining stereotypically if I thought it didn't support Jenko's actions, it doesn't come up but Jenko does start searching for something more, what he's missing being the fire enflamed through his arguments with Schmidt, that fire enabling them to cohesively function highly combatively, as long as they remain organized, which they do as time goes by.

The Colleges of the United States of America may wish to explore the issue further.

Having Peter Stormare (The Ghost) complain about how things were better in the 90s was a nice touch.

Has he ever been in a Woody Allen movie?

Libraries are unfairly examined.

It's a funny plot device.

But nothing beats having the physical book in-hand.