Lord & Miller: 22 Jump Street (2014)

22 Jump Street is the sequel to 21 Jump Street – and it is a curious kind of sequel. From the moment it begins, we’re continually, obsessively reminded that this is exactly what we saw last time, except at college – the main joke of the film is that it’s a blatant rip-off of the first one. More than that, the end credits roll over comic proposals for the next twenty or so Jump Street sequels – it gets up to about 40 Jump Street – to the point where it feels like the film’s jumped the sequel stage altogether and moved directly into franchising. For another type of film, that might spell death, but it actually works quite well for this rebooted Jump Street, and even weirdly makes 22 feel more original than 21, precisely as it revels in its lack of originality. In part, that’s because both reboots have tended to avoid straight comedy or action in favour of something more like a study in swagger – and swagger is nothing if not aroused at the prospect of being a franchise. As a result, the more generic and predictable the film becomes, the more erotic and titillating it feels, although it is an odd, dispersed eroticism, the eroticism of a swagger brand going viral, as Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill’s poses and postures ripple out across increasingly larger and more elaborately choreographed crowds, culminating with a massive Spring Break set piece. Apart from the Jump Street films, directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have only worked in animation, and that really suits these heaving crowd scenes – they’re prescient that swagger yearns to become synthetic, self-replicating, divorced from any one person or body. Of course, that means that Tatum and Hill are doomed to irrelevance – their swagger quickly becomes something bigger than them, leaves them behind – but it also means that the film can’t really be bothered with their bromance, which is quite refreshing. For the most part, their endless squabbles just feel like a gay romantic comedy that nobody in the audience or film is really watching – except, perhaps, for Ice Cube, who's insatiable as the film's unimpressed godfather (or grandfather) of swagger, scowling every time this heave of white dudes presumes to pass for black.