If Hollywood studios are going to comb through their attics for old properties which can be relaunched as feature film franchises, they could flourish to look for little-remembered TV series more well known for just a catchy concept (say, a squad of youthful cops who go undercover as kids) and for its status like a cultural footnote (let?s say, for the health of argument, it gave Johnny Depp?s career its original launch) than for the occur.
Simply a relatively small die-hard audience remembers
Watch 21 Jump Street Free the cop drama, which aired on the nascent FOX network from 1987 to 1991. But a lot of more viewers may have a fondness for ?21 Jump Street,? the newest action-comedy movie.
The film mildly lampoons the ludicrous premise of the TV show before utilizing it like a jumping-off point for an inspired and wonderfully silly tale of two 20-something pals who does, inside bottom line, happily trade their guns and badges for another possibility to function as the popular kids in secondary school.
We first meet Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) as high-school seniors in 2005; Jenko mocks the nerdy, Eminem-wannabe Schmidt for being too dorky to get a prom date, only to find out moments later that, as a result of his terrible grades, he won?t be attending the fundamental dance either.
Cut to seven years later, the spot that the two meet again as classmates on the ?Metropolitan City Police Academy.? (The generic location becomes on the list of film?s better running gags, to billboards that read ?Watch a Movie? or just ?Billboard.?)
Jenko helps whip Schmidt into shape, and Schmidt tutors Jenko with the tests, along with the two become best pals. If they damage their first big post-graduate arrest, they get used on the Jump Street station with an undercover program that hasn?t been known because the ?80s. (?All they will do is recycle old ideas,? complains their superior officer, played by Nick Offerman inside an amusing cameo.)
Jump Street has got the requisite angry African-American police captain (Ice Cube), as well as the duo gets sent to infiltrate a top school when a new designer drug is making the rounds. Schmidt?s fake transcripts say he?s a science whiz, while Jenko gets going to gut classes, but since the two can?t bother to remember their undercover identities, they end up switching places, allowing Schmidt for getting his first taste of popularity while Jenko spends time at using the smart geeks.
All of this plotting merely offers a framework for any group of hilarious set pieces, from a wild house party (the screenplay is actually by Michael Bacall, this writer behind teen bacchanal ?Project X?) with a prom-night car chase involving three stretch limos.
But ?21 Jump Street? can be smart about its characters, from the cops getting depressed by the idea of an increased school do-over on the Class of 2005?s cluelessness about such things as texting, tolerance, environmentalism as well as the increasing level of fragmented sub-cliques.