A comedy sequel that is better than the original is rare to find, if not impossible. I’ve had this conversation with some of my friends before. The example that we agreed upon was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It’s debatable if this is even really a sequel, though. We couldn’t find another sequel that was even really comparable to the first in terms of hilarity. The Hangover Part II was funny but offered nothing new, and the first The Hangover was hilarious. After watching The Hangover Part III (which I found absolutely terrible), I liked the first two even less. Many great comedies (Old School, Wedding Crashers, Groundhog Day, There’s Something About Mary) certainly made plenty of money to warrant a sequel but went the smart route (at least to me) in not making a movie to make a movie. A couple of franchises did the original proud by being *almost* as funny (the American Pie franchise comes to mind). Then there were other franchises that waited so long to make their sequel and had such high expectations that they were bound to fail (Meet the Fockers wasn’t anywhere close to as funny as Meet the Parents, while Little Fockers was more of an embarrassment than was The Hangover Part III). Likewise, The Naked Gun is an all-time classic, but The Naked Gun 2 1/2 and The Naked Gun 33 1/3 are worth watching but are not nearly as funny). So there wasn’t a massive precedent for 22 Jump Street being as funny or funnier than 21 Jump Street. But, if it wasn’t more humorous than the original, it was darn close and worth the admission price.
Category Archives: Chris Miller
21 Jump Street (2012)
The odds that a movie comedy remake of a television drama that, while critically acclaimed, ran for just five full seasons could be a blockbuster movie you think would be rare. I would think the same thing. And when I first saw the preview of Chris Miller’s (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Shrek the Third) 21 Jump Street, my first thought was why. After finishing the preview, I thought this would be a disaster. I was wrong. While I hadn’t heard a single person say this movie was bad, it still sat next to my DVD player for over two weeks after its Netflix envelope arrived. Channing Tatum (Stop Loss, Public Enemies) and Jonah Hill (Moneyball, Superbad) are decent actors. I’m certainly not going to go out of my way to watch a movie because one of these two is the star of it. As a duo, I thought they wouldn’t work. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed this movie.