Anyone that hears the name “21 Jump Street” that knows anything about TV series from the late ’80s will automatically think about Johnny Depp and the series that helped trigger the fame he is known for today.
When I heard they were making a movie about one of my favorite TV series, I jumped at the chance to see how they would portray it, and they did a good job.
When I heard that Jonah Hill, who most associate with “Superbad,” and Channing Tatum, who is known for doing action films and romantic dramas such as “Dear John,” would be in it, I was a little worried about the movie.
I wanted it to stay as true as possible to the TV series.
Even though there was more comedy in the movie then in the series, I thought it stayed as true as it could to the TV series.
There were even cameo appearances by my favorite characters from the series, such as Tom Hanson (Johnny Depp), Doug Penhall (Peter DeLuise) and Judy Hoffs (Holly Robinson Peete).
The movie is about two officers who are sent to the 21 Jump Street, a program for young cops, after they fail to make an arrest that went bad when the gang members made fun of them for looking too young to be a cop.
The cops in the program are sent into high schools with overcover identities as students to solve some sort of crime that is happening within the school.
In the movie, Hill and Tatum are sent into a school as the McQuaid brothers to find out who is making and selling this new synthetic drug.
The McQuaid brothers were a reoccurring and most popular persona for Hanson and Penhall in the TV series.
The fact that they put those “characters” in the movie would make any fan of the TV series nostalgic for and be overcome with joy.
By making the problem a synthetic drug, the director brought this movie into the 21st century since those types of drugs are the biggest problem right now.
It also helped stay true to the series because on numerous cases, the problems at the schools were drug related, especially when it came to private schools and rich white kids.
I think both of those aspects was a great combination to grab the attention of all types of viewers; those who could take a walk down memory lane and those who are concerned with the new drug fad.
There were a couple things that did bother me and I felt steered away from the original series and that was the relationship between the two main characters and the rest of the 21 Jump Street crew.
In the series, the main characters all worked together at some point to close the case, but in the movie the other members seemed to hate the main characters.
I definitely would have liked to see a little more collaboration between all of them.
Like at the end, the final scene is at a prom and this is where the series the characters not on the case would be the dates of the two main characters and any “friends” they made.
Instead the “dates” for the prom were hookers introduced at the beginning of the movie.
The little things that reminded me of the TV series are probably the things that made me like the movie as much as I did.
An example of this would be like the fact that in the show Depp’s character drove a powder blue Ford Mustang and in the movie they had Hill’s character drive a powder blue car but instead of a nice car, it was kind of a junker.
Overall, the film not only made me laugh, but it also made me nostalgic.
Fans of the old TV series will love it for the similarities and fans of comedy films will love it for the laughs.