Movie Review: 22 Jump Street

22 Jump Street was originally going to release in India in September – now that it’s released in theaters today, I’ll give you ten reasons to go see it at the earliest.

1) If you’ve seen 21 Jump Street and mildly chuckled, you’ll laugh your posterior off while seeing 22 Jump Street. It’s funnier, snapper and nerdier than the previous film.

2) If you liked the bromance in the previous movie then there is approximately around 500 times more bromance this time around. The bromance isn’t just bromance for the sake of the word – there is actual heartfelt emotion between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.

3) Hill and Tatum have more chemistry than Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hupburn in Sabrina. They’re the loveliest couple I’ve seen this year on screen and they’re hilarious as hell.

4) There is a breakup scene between Hill and Tatum – where the two friends realize that there comes a time in the bro relationship where they have to part ways because they shouldn’t hold the other one down. That scene would go down as the single most howlarious movie moment of the year.

5) All of the bromantic running gags in the movie are built around a plot that is self aware and self-referential. Hollywood’s tendency to remake and reboot stuff is parodied to great effect in here.

6) Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller gather everything they learned from their previous outings Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The Lego Movie into this film. All of the self-parodying goodies are present, but there are a ton of new things as well, albeit still being mildly meta.

7) This time around, Jenko (Tatum) gets to play the dumb jock character for a reason – he gets to realize that he isn’t as dumb and useless as he thinks he is. And he finally finds someone who is as dumb and athletic as him, much to the chagrin of Schmidt (Hill) of course.

8) There is a busload of slapstick and offensive humor, but like in the previous film it somehow manages to fall into the goofy good-natured category rather than the turgid one. Thanks mainly to the directorial prowess of Lord and Miller.

9) Ice Cube gets a bigger role this time around, and is naturally even more foul mouthed than in the previous outing. There is a hilarious subplot involving his daughter and Schmidt.

10) Jillian Bell is the find of the year – she’s a comic genius who is sure to go far ahead in Hollywood.   

(First published in MiD Day)