Trailer Tracking: ‘Wanderlust,’ ‘Safe House,’ ‘This Means War,’ More

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Movie: “21 Jump Street”

Best Parts of the Trailer: Jonah Hill selling jokes right and left; Ice Cube saying “Twittersphere”; Three words: Ron freakin’ Swanson.

Worst Parts of the Trailer: Any part when they mention the synthetic drug “plot”; the eeriness of seeing Jonah Hill that skinny; realizing that Channing Tatum is nowhere near as funny as Mark Wahlberg.

Our Take: Admit it – this red-band trailer makes the “21 Jump Street” movie look ten times better than any “21 Jump Street” movie deserves to be. Not that the trailer is perfect, but, c’mon, a movie version of a semi-cult, failed Fox TV series from the late ‘80s about undercover cops infiltrating a high school? That’s not an especially high bar to jump. Particularly when you remember the resounding failure of the “Mod Squad” movie that Claire Danes got caught up in back in 1999. So, at the very least, you HAVE to respect the comedic pedigree behind the new “Jump Street” movie. It’s written by Jonah Hill; it stars Hill, Rob Riggle, Nick Offerman, and Ellie Kemper, among others; and it was directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who created one of the most underrated animated comedies of the past decade with “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”. Actually, my biggest gripe with the “21 Jump Street” trailer is that it tries to sell the movie as more of an Adam McKay/Apatow action-comedy experience, while completely ignoring the fact that the minds behind Flint Lockwood and the town of Chew and Swallow were actually behind the camera.

Speaking of Adam McKay, the trailer for “21 Jump Street” does make the film come across like a pretty close analog to McKay’s “The Other Guys”, with Hill playing the Will Ferrell role and Channing Tatum filling in for Mark Wahlberg. This isn’t a bad model to ape – “The Other Guys” was McKay’s best film since “Anchorman”, and Ferrell and Wahlberg made a surprisingly potent comedy team. The “Jump Street” trailer doesn’t completely sell me on Hill and Tatum’s partnership (Hill seems to be doing the bulk of the heavy lifting), but there are much, much worse films for them to emulate than “The Other Guys”. (My BIG worry is that, once you get beyond the drug humor and gunplay, “21 Jump Street” will turn into a more-ironic version of “Never Been Kissed”.)

The “popular kids selling a synthetic drug” plot doesn’t really work in the trailer – is the movie taking the threat seriously or not? – but I do love that the preview completely addresses one of the most ridiculous aspects of “21 Jump Street”, i.e. the fact that Tatum’s undercover high school student looks like, and I quote, “a forty-year-old man.” There’s a long, weird history of 30-year-old actors playing teenagers on TV and in movies, and I think it’s great that Lord and Miller honed in on that inherent silliness as something to focus on. For “21 Jump Street” to work, it has to do what “The Other Guys” did so well – mock the action genre while, at the same time, delivering a fun, legitimately compelling action-comedy experience. Too often, action-comedies get caught up with the mocking and forget that no one comes to an action movie for irony alone. If “21 Jump Street” can use that irony sparingly – giving us only a few winks to the original show and creating an honestly interesting conflict – while letting Jonah Hill verbally go off as a new cop with a gun… “21 Jump Street” could work. Color me optimistic.

TRAILER OUTLOOK: Good. I want more evidence that there’s some life in Hill and Tatum’s partnership before I commit totally, but it looks way better than a “21 Jump Street” movie should.