D: Phil Lord, Chris Miller / 112m

Cast: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Peter Stormare, Wyatt Russell, Amber Stevens, Jillian Bell, Kenny Lucas, Keith Lucas, Nick Offerman, Jimmy Tatro, Caroline Aaron

Having saved the day in 21 Jump Street – and to everyone’s surprise – rookie cops Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) are given another assignment, but this time instead of going undercover at a high school, they’re off to college instead.  With the church at 21 Jump Street having been bought back by the Koreans, the pair are assigned to the Vietnamese church across the road at 22 Jump Street.  Still under the command of the ever-cussing Captain Dickson (Cube), Schmidt and Jenko have to find who’s dealing a new drug on campus called WhyPhy (pronounced Wi-Fi), and who the supplier is as well.

College life proves to be divisive for the duo, with Jenko being welcomed into a jock fraternity headed by Zook (Russell), while Schmidt finds himself welcome amongst the geeks, in particular, art major Maya (Stevens).  When Zook is revealed to have an incriminating tattoo, Jenko refuses to accept he might be the dealer; so strong is his new attachment to the fraternity life he decides he and Schmidt should go their own way.  When the college counsellor is arrested and the case officially closed, neither Schmidt nor Jenko is convinced he’s the dealer.  They resume their investigation and discover the supplier is a criminal known as the Ghost (Stormare).  They also find out he plans to distribute the new drug at the upcoming spring break celebrations at Puerto Mexico.  With the dealer’s identity still a mystery, Schmidt and Jenko travel there in a bid to apprehend him and stop the drug spreading nationwide.

The surprise success of 21 Jump Street meant that a sequel was inevitable, and returning writers/directors Lord and Miller have a great time subverting the pitfalls of such an endeavour, most notably in an extended sequence featuring the hangdog Deputy Chief Hardy (Offerman) where his instructions to Schmidt and Jenko to “keep things the same because they seemed to work the first time” are carried to their logical extreme (and then beyond).  There’s even a reference to the increased budget for the movie – $70m as opposed to the original’s $42m – when Hardy says the top brass have given 22 Jump Street more money to help them with their investigation.  It’s one of the funniest scenes in the movie, and played to perfection by messrs Offerman, Tatum and Hill.

As it turns out, the investigation is of secondary (hell, even tertiary) importance, as the movie focuses on the break-up of Schmidt and Jenko’s professional and personal relationships, with Jenko’s bromance with Zook taking up a great deal of screen time (as if we didn’t get how important it is to him), leaving Schmidt to act possessive and look broken hearted, even with his budding romance with Maya taking off at the same time.  This jealousy angle, somewhat signposted from the beginning, is given far more emphasis than it needs, and there’s very little room for the actual investigation, other than a few half-hearted attempts at surveillance and a trip to the counsellor’s office that ends up mocking every couples therapy session you’ve ever seen.  But, despite these scenes being very well played by Tatum and Hill, they often outstay their welcome, and could do with some judicious editing.

With plenty of scenes that could have been excised or shortened, 22 Jump Street is a movie sequel where the saying “Less is more” is definitely not adhered to.  It’s as if Lord and Miller, by embracing the tropes and conventions that contribute to most sequels, felt that being self-referential was all they had to do, and that it would get them off the hook when things didn’t quite work out.  But by following the template of the first movie so closely, what little originality there is on display is overwhelmed by so much that is familiar.  It’s a tightrope walk, and one where not everyone manages to stay on.  That said, the jokes about the stars’ age and looks come thick and fast and are very funny, with Hill in particular being given a roasting on more than one occasion.

Hill and Tatum still make for a great double act, though it’s Tatum who edges it here, his physicality and willingness to look foolish having more appeal than Hill’s strident comic style.  Cube is, well, Cube playing every other foul-mouthed, aggressive character he’s ever played (he’s in danger of becoming his own caricature now), while the rest of the supporting cast deal well with a range of underwritten characters.  There are cameos from Rob Riggle and Dave Franco, and the usual attempts to make it difficult to work out who the dealer is (not easy but not difficult either), and there’s a great moment when Jenko uses a girl on the beach to see off two of the Ghost’s thugs (who appear out of nowhere).

Enjoyable for the most part, with one absolutely standout moment about halfway through – watch for Jenko’s reaction when he finds out something about Schmidt’s love life – 22 Jump Street coasts along for much of its running time, riffing off the previous movie and doing just enough for the most part to avoid being looked on as a “contractual obligation”.  There are laughs to be had, but the action scenes are low-key and not very exciting, and there’s an incredibly indulgent end credits sequence that is amusing to begin with but soon runs out of both steam and imagination.

Rating: 5/10 – too long, and too uninterested in its drugs-related storyline, 22 Jump Street will nevertheless please fans of the original; if there is a 23 Jump Street (as seems likely) then a tighter, less self-reverential storyline will be required.