22 Jump Street

Certificate 15. 112 mins.

Comedy/Action/Romance.

Starring: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Amber Stevens, Wyatt Russell, Peter Stormare, Jillian Bell, Jimmy Tatro, Nick Offerman.

Officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) investigate criminal mastermind The Ghost (Peter Stormare) and continue to be a liability to the public and each other.

After a sting to capture The Ghost goes bad, Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) recruits the pair for another hare-brained undercover operation. This time, they must pose as college students and unmask the suppliers of a drug called W.H.Y.P.H.Y. (Work Hard? Yes! Play Hard? Yes!).

Schmidt and Jenko adopt their unlikely cover identities and infiltrate different student cliques. Buff and athletic Jenko becomes a star player on the football team and forges a fraternal bond with kindred spirit Zook (Wyatt Russell). “We’re like Batman and Robin. But we’re both Batman!” gushes Zook.

Meanwhile, Schmidt dabbles with slam poetry and becomes attracted to spunky student Maya (Amber Stevens).

With a knowing wink and a profusion of expletives, 22 Jump Street abides by the conventions of a sequel and condemns its dim-witted yet loveable protagonists to relive the plot of the original on a vastly inflated budget. That’s no bad thing.

Tongue-in-cheek, self-referential playfulness abounds in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s uproarious action-packed comedy, which adheres unabashedly to a winning formula and gleefully colludes with us for various in-jokes and sight gags.

Wonderful on-screen chemistry between the leads powers the picture through the occasional lull and the scriptwriters have a ball increasing the homoerotic undercurrents of the central bro-mance into an unstoppable flood.

There is a smattering of raunchy gags involving sex toys and male appendages but the script’s sweetness always trumps crudity.

A two-disc set comprising 21 Jump Street and the sequel is also available.