This is the follow-up to the highly profitable comedy hit 21 Jump Street. Again, the focus is on making it a comedy but this time the jokes and ridiculous situations are amped up even more. All the cast and directors/writers are back and things get moving right away.
I particularly liked a quick scene that featured the Benny Hill music with a couple of cars chasing each other across the screen several times. That’s the kind of clever throwback stuff I really respect and I only wish there had been more of it. Ice Cube also gets more screen time here and uses it quite well, getting one of the funniest scenes as he trashes a fancy lunch buffet.
There’s also a credits sequence at the end that posits tons of different mock sequels and it’s one of the funniest parts of the entire film. Does a great job at making fun of themselves and just having “fun” in general with the whole concept. I kind of wish the whole movie had just been a bunch of these sequences put together.
Strangely, this one tries for drama at certain points. Not serious drama but also not comedy and those scenes just came off feeling boring. There’s a few good laughs here but I’m not sure this achieved the same level of funny as the first one. That being said, it’s not that far off.