22 Jump Street

22 Jump Street

Dirs. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

3.5 out of 5

What a fine racket Phil Lord and Chris Miller have going.  With The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street, and now 22 Jump Street - a sequel as riotously self-referential as the original - the directing team has established a basic formula for success: start with a familiar collection of genre tropes, then draw attention to said tropes as a meta-joke while still constructing the film around their inevitable payoffs.  It's like a spoof, but not quite: a self-affirming self-parody that not only anticipates the audience's incredulity, but also validates and rewards it.

It's a clever and extremely audience-flattering approach to storytelling, which is why I hardly even noticed the similarities between 22 Jump Street and its predecessor at first glance.  Yes, buddy cops Jenko (Channing Tatum) and Schmidt (Jonah Hill) once again screw up a narcotics bust and wind up in an undercover unit headed by the casually apoplectic Capt. Dickson (Ice Cube).  And once again they are sent to investigate the spread of a new designer hallucinogen at an academic institution, posing as students to infiltrate the drug's supply chain.  But this time, the filmmakers are so upfront about blatantly repeating themselves - the deputy police chief (Nick Offerman) sternly instructs them to "do the same thing" since the department has spent a fortune "to make sure Jump Street keeps going" - they immediately disarm the most obvious criticisms aimed at big summer sequels.

But is Jump Street doing itself a disservice by constantly making light of itself?  It seems like the film's main agenda is to acknowledge the cleverness of its one Big Joke, without directly acknowledging that there are viable ways to take sequels in a fresh and exciting direction.  Instead, story beats are carbon-copied:  Schmidt again awkwardly romances a girl (Amber Stevens) who's out of his league, and Jenko starts drifting from his partner after finding acceptance within a new social circle.  But the film's main agenda is to repeat its strategy of flattering audiences with inside jokes that play on our basic recognition of cinematic language and storytelling - even if it leads toward ridiculing the principles that undergird our enjoyment of most narrative artforms, namely the suspension of disbelief.

Ah, but let's not get too carried away.  22 Jump Street isn't a seminal critique of film theory - it's a delivery system for jokes about dumb jocks and ineffectual nerds.  Moment to moment, the movie is unquestionably funny, a testament to its terrific chemistry, strong comedic vision, and solidly superior schtick that's just as amusing the second time around.  That's a fine accomplishment in and of itself, and I don't blame the filmmakers for running back the formula that got them here.  In fact, it's quite democratic.  Because in the end, not only does 22 Jump Street give us what we expect, but also obliquely raises the question of why we want it in the first place, and you're free to enjoy it whichever way you want.

The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie
Dir. Phil Lord and Chris Miller

3 out of 5

"Everything is awesome!" chirps the theme song of the lively-yet-formulaic The Lego Movie, which doubles as the motto of the film's protagonist, a naive construction worker named Emmet (Chris Pratt).  Like the rest of his fellow citizens in Bricksburg, he lives according to a set of instructions that enforce a cheerful conformity in everything from dress to architecture to sitcom viewing habits.  Emmet's pursuit of homogeneity extends to his occupation, where it's his responsibility to demolish "weird stuff" that threatens the sanctity of the instructions.  Everything changes when Emmet finds an unusual Lego piece with special significance to a secret society of creative freethinkers called the Master Builders.  Or, more accurately, some things change.  Though the Master Builders immediately hail his discovery of their sought-after "piece of resistance" as proof that he is the Special, a savior prophesied by the wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman), it never really occurs to Emmet - or the makers of The Lego Movie, for that matter - that if everything is awesome, then nothing truly is.

Now, wouldn't that be quite the subversive message for an unabashed 90-minute toy commercial?  To its credit, The Lego Movie sneaks in as much cheekiness and satire as its mission will bear.  That's mostly due to the sensibilities of co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, also known as the guys who helped re-imagine 21 Jump Street as a smart skewering of buddy-cop tropes.  And early on, The Lego Movie is indeed a surprisingly sarcastic takedown of modern corporate complacency, from the ultra-generic decoration of Emmet's apartment (complete with posters that advertise "A Popular Band") to the diabolical plotting of Lord Business (Will Ferrell), an insecure bureaucrat whose fanatical belief that the world of Lego should never be altered leads to the development of a terrifying weapon.  It's up to Emmet and a motley crew of Builders - including uber-secret agent Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), '80s technology fetishist Benny (Charlie Day), and Batman (Will Arnett) - to stop Business and return their world to the days of unfettered creativity.

The Lego Movie owes a heavy debt to movies like Toy Story, with which it shares a fundamental sense of humor about the secret world of inanimate objects, and adds belief that imagination cannot flourish within strict boundaries.  However, Lord and Miller punt on their most intriguing ideas as the film shifts into a rapid-fire pattern of riotous sight gags and self-referential humor.  It’s all exceedingly cute and clever - as if acknowledging the irony of forcing a narrative onto a toy designed to spark creative ingenuity - before taking an overly mawkish third-act turn that belies the film's wit.  At least the early ambition of the story is sustained in the visuals, as The Lego Movie looks unlike any other animated film.  Utilizing a mix of computer and stop-motion animation, it takes inspiration from every corner of the Lego universe to pack the frame with an incredible amount of detail and in-jokes, which sometime fly by too quickly to be fully appreciated.
  
Ultimately, there are two ways to play with Legos: follow the instructions in the box or let your imagination run wild.  While The Lego Movie wishes to capture the spirit of the latter, in practice it's more of the former, a precise and pleasant family entertainment that sticks to an esteem-boosting "everyone is special" message.  It's a little disappointing to see wry, genre-savvy filmmakers like Lord and Miller struggle with the limitations of the movie's conventional form, but at least they try to break that mold wherever they can, making The Lego Movie as awesome as it can possibly be.