Jonah Hill meets Channing Tatum.

They are undercover cops, they are awkward and they are going back to high school. This is the perfect comical set up to snag the attention of audiences eager for a good laugh, but as the movie progressed the overall story became less and less amusing.

It was funny and it drew laughter from the audience, but the plot did not do justice to the duo.

Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) have known each other since high school and are polar opposites. While Jenko graduated as an under achieving bully and football jock, Schmidt left high school with good grades and the memory of Jenko making his life hell. They both end up in the same police academy and leave high school in the past to become a balanced pair. Brains and brawn.

The two are sent back to high school as brothers and their one job is to put an end to trending campus drugs. Find the dealer and turn him in.
If Jenko and Schmidt break any laws or fail, they can kiss their careers goodbye. Sure enough the boys become attached to their new cliques only this time their roles are completely switched.

Tatum and Hill were not the let down. They were the aspect of the movie that held interest and kept the crowd laughing. As always the actors maintained their alluring and unrefined talent along with a few others: Ice cube, Rob Riggle and Brie Larson. The cast captured their roles very well despite the lack of ingenuity given to the story by directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller and writer Michael Bacall.

The plot was mediocre, at best. Every scene was expected and unoriginal. In an industry where hundreds of comedies are released every year, Lord, Miller and Bacall did a poor job with creativity. The plot felt routine. It was a regurgitation of every other cookie-cutter story. The happy and uncomplicated ending was predictable and cheesy.

Most of the humor stemmed from the hysterical nature of each actor, but like the movie itself, a number of jokes were monotonous and repetitive. With Bacall, the former writer of “Inglorious Bastards” working on this production, it could have been much better.

21 Jumpstreet is appropriate for any night in with friends where viewers can easily tune in and out, but it is not worth the ever-rising price of a movie ticket.