’22 Jump Street’ Red Band Trailer: Jenko & Schmidt Go to College

Published 14 hours ago by Sandy Schaefer Few expected it – well, okay, save for our editor in chief Kofi Outlaw – but the 21 Jump Street movie reboot was a surprise hit, flying high on the unexpected chemistry between its leads – Channing Tatum (proving his comedy mettle) and Jonah Hill as buddy-cops Jenko and Schmidt – and witty direction from Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who successfully made the jump to live-action filmmaking after their debut on the 3D animated Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
All four of the aforementioned players have reunited for the followup, cheekily titled 22 Jump Street: a new adventure, where Jenko and Schmidt must navigate the wayward world known as college – a place where serious academic study and intellectual discourse unfolds by day, giving rise to booze and drug-fueled partying by night. However, in the process of doing so, the odd couple are forced to not only reexamine their own adult identities, but determine whether or not their partnership/friendship can mature to the next level.

So, in other words, the screenplay by Hill and his returning collaborator Michael Bacall – with revisions by Oren Uziel, who also worked on upcoming Mortal Kombat and Men in Black reboot/installments – sounds like it has the same plot as the first installment… only set in college.

There’s a good deal of back-patting and referencing previous jokes in the 22 Jump Street red band trailer – a healthy chunk of which is just recycled footage from the first movie; understandable, given that production on the sequel began about two and a half months ago (so Lord and Miller can’t be too far along in post-production yet). The new material includes 21 Jump Street scene-stealers Ice Cube – as Jenko and Schmidt’s foul-mouthed superior, Captain Dickson – and Parks and Recreation‘s Nick Offerman, once again cameoing (while nearly breaking the fourth wall) as Deputy Chief Hardy.
All in all, though, this teaser does what it’s meant to do: remind moviegoers what they loved about the first installment and get them excited to see more of the same. If later trailers have that same rehashed feel to them, well… then we’ll have more reason to be worried that one 21 Jump Street sequel might’ve been one too many.
_____
22 Jump Street opens in theaters on June 13th, 2014.