21 Jump Street MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +1 Content: -4

Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Brie Larson, Ice Cube. Comedy/action/adventure. Written by Michael Bacall, Jonah Hill. Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

FILM SYNOPSIS: Two immature high school grads join the police force and are assigned to the secret Jump Street unit, using their youthful appearance to go undercover at a troubled high school. Based on the TV series from the 1980s, with R-rated comic material used to update the story.

PREVIEW REVIEW: In a way, I was forced to attend this screening. I had absolutely nothing else to write about this week. Sadly, I knew what to expect. Along with a few clever moments, the storyline was riddled with crudity and obscenity, it being just another in the long line of raunchy comedies. I fear comic crudity will last as long as Hip Hop.

I’ll give the filmmakers this: at least they presented the raunchy humor with a touch of cleverness. But it’s still raunchy humor. Before I lost count, I heard over a hundred combined uses of the s- and f-words, plus several other equally offensive words, as well as four or five uses of God’s name followed by a curse. The violence was played for laughs, as was the drug and alcohol use done by teenagers with our two “heroes” plying the high schoolers with the substances at a party that rivals John Belushi’s frat orgy in Animal House. At one point a villain was shot in the groin, the bullet severing his penis. This, the writers, the actors and the audience found amusing. Oh, and it got even more graphic and stupid than that.

Jonah Hill has much to offer moviegoers, as evidenced in Moneyball. But he, like most of today’s comedians, plays it safe. He garners laughs from the toilet bowl. It’s the easiest way to get a laugh – put on screen what your parents told you never to say or do in public. This humor is generated from the “I-can’t-believe-I-just-saw-that” school of comedy. It will be interesting to see him attempt a joke that depends on wit rather than the visual gag of showing someone vomit, or, no, I can’t say the rest. You might find it gross. I know I did.

Preview Reviewer: Phil Boatwright
Distributor: Columbia