I firmly believe that a great piece of art can come from any source, any inspiration. But where exactly that inspiration comes from, and the reason for its selection, is up for quite a bit more skepticism in my eyes. Enter “Battleship”, a $209 million film whose primary inspiration is a plastic game in which little pegs and ships are the sources of excitement and tension. It certainly goes without saying that “Battleship” was created out of executive laziness and creative bankruptcy, alongside numerous other greenlit Hasbro projects (I believe at one point, a “Candyland” film was a reality). But the fact remains that, while it’s certainly a cynical, contrived exercise of financial gambling, “Battleship” is a competently made film.

While certainly assembled from a checklist reading “beginning, middle, end, action, boobs, humor, etc.”, a coherent narrative has been assembled. The Hopper brothers are both naval officers with distinct styles: Alex a brilliant slacker and Stone a straight-laced, disciplinary figure. As all the world’s major naval powers are assembled for a series of exercises, several hulking metal objects come crashing down to the Pacific ocean — revealed to be highly sophisticated alien ships, with damn-near the only thing equipped to handle it being the ships at sea. Alex juggles this with his desire to marry the gorgeous Samantha, whose father is also the Commander of the entire Pacific fleet. Melodrama and explosive rounds abound.

It should come as no surprise that “Battleship” is a hollow shell of a narrative with muscle where brain should be, noise where heart should be. Its attempts at counter-balancing this (with its comedic/romantic subplots) are as ineffective as they are harmless. But it finds pathos in the dynamic between the two brother protagonists: actors Taylor Kitsch & Alexander Skarsgard find a relationship with genuine heart — humor at some points, and when tragedy strikes one, even a degree of sadness.

Further acting efforts come with mixed results. Liam Neeson, who seems to be making a habit of elevating mediocre blockbusters’ credibility, has an enjoyable cameo as the Hoppers’ military superior. Conversely, Rihanna gives a performance whose every quip gets progressively more laughable. Brooklyn Decker, too, is a prime example of model-turned-actresses who should have stuck with their first profession.

“Battleship”s greatest evidence of unoriginality lies with its action sequences — in essence, the only reason the damn thing exists in the first place. Where many films have momentum and pacing in their sequences, “Battleship” has noise, clanging and fury. Director Peter Berg certainly demonstrates visual clarity and skill, it’s just that what he’s filming has very little of interest.

The inherit purpose of writing a review is to explore things about a film that aren’t necessarily self-evident, which presents a problem for “Battleship”: it’s all at face value. There’s nothing one can say about “Battleship” that it will not proudly, loudly demonstrate for itself. There’s certainly admirable qualities in that, but also the sort of shamelessness that begetted the project in the first place. D+

It’s not the average Hollywood comedy that desires to lampoon American democratic policies, consumptive habits, perception of foreign powers, collectively “independent” sub-cultures, and Megan Fox. Then again, not much about the career of Sacha Baron Cohen has been terribly typical. An mild-mannered Cambridge graduate, Cohen has somehow become the face of contemporary crude comedy, mainly through his half-documentary, half-narrative films (“Ali G Indahouse”, “Bruno”, “Borat”). His newest effort, “The Dictator”, represents a segue into purely fictional material, and it lands with more of a thud than its incendiary predecessors.

“The Dictator” stars Baron Cohen as Admiral General Aladeen, the all-powerful ruler of the fictional North African province Wadiya. He is a dedicated, passionate man — however, that passion tends to be dedicated to the suppression of free speech and action. In the midst of a visit to New York City, Aladeen is betrayed by his radical advisor, Tamir (Ben Kingsley in an embarrassingly marginal role), who represents the outrageous cause of democracy. Aladeen, now replaced by a hysterically unintelligent double (also Cohen), is cast out into the city, only taken in by a hyper-”organic” activist type, played by Anna Faris. The couple, although radical opposites, seem to bond closely over their shared running of a yuppie trade-market, to say nothing of their plentiful body hair.

“The Dictator”, running at a taut 83 minutes, still manages to overstay its welcome and then some. But what almost always takes precedent in “The Dictator” is the need to squeeze out jokes whenever possible, which is both a curse and a huge blessing. One thing has not changed about Cohen here — he remains among the funniest people working today. His humor is as impossibly fast and furious as ever, often resulting in hysterical quips. But the down-side of this is its effect on the film’s narrative momentum: the pacing is lumpy and misguided, occasionally giving great length to marginal gags, and then condensing sequences of significant events into two-minute montages. It’s simply impossible to get a grip on this film emotionally; one is left breathless at the gags yet greatly underwhelmed by the actual context in which they’re presented. In essence: there’s nothing to this movie than what one receives at face-value, which wouldn’t be so large a problem were it not presented in a context of allegedly serious social commentary. C+

Say you pick up a shovel, and with this shovel, you begin to dig a hole. At first, this task requires great effort and physical exertion, requiring great concentration, passion even. You continue to hammer away in its pursuit. But after a while, you are no longer digging the hole to dig the hole, or even facing great difficulty in it anymore. You are digging the hole for the sake of itself. Herein lies the tragedy of Tim Burton’s career.

A proud promoter in his three-decade filmography of the strange and the gothic, Burton has always garnered my respect for his refusal to compromise his vision and integrity, whatever it may be. He’s not an artist in pursuit of theme or message, so much as rhythm and character. But this de-emphasis on confined storytelling has swollen to nightmarish proportions with Burton’s last two films, 2010′s “Alice in Wonderland” and the subject of the paragraphs subsequent: “Dark Shadows”.

With this duo, Burton’s concern for storytelling has gone right out of the window, replaced instead with an overriding desire to make the characters sound goofy and the sets look poppy. Thankfully, the characters sound goofy and the sets look poppy. Burton seems to have no desire to tell a coherent story, marked with organic people wielding motivations and subtleties. Most oddly of all he has no desire to round out Barnabas Collins, the protagonist played by Johnny Depp, whose passion for the source-material ’60s soap opera is what drove the film into production anyway.

Barnabas is an 18th-century gentleman, among many who have come to the New World in pursuit of wealth and love. He has securely found both, but in accomplishing the latter, he angers a witch, Angelique, who madly lusts for Barnabas. Angelique condemns him to two centuries in a coffin, emerging as a vampire into the radical, unstable time that is 1972. His once-prosperous fish-canning business has lost its luster, his expansive Maine mansion is now occupied only by his (thoroughly dysfunctional) family, and Angelique, still around, is adored by the town. Collins clearly has his work cut out for him. His lust for Victoria, a new housemaid eerily resembling his fallen wife 200 years prior, is another factor.

Burton certainly conveys the story here, he simply does nothing with that story. Watching the film bob from scene to scene carries about as much emotional impact as it would have, had I simply read the film’s Wikipedia summary and called it a day. So far as the supporting cast, there’s a very lively group here (Michelle Pfieffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, the best young actress of this generation, Chloe Moretz) but “Dark Shadows” simply has no humanistic, organic use for them. They’re here to show up in a handful of scenes and deliver bizarre one-liners that, instead of driving the characters forward, serve as perhaps the film’s only narrative momentum. Moretz in particular, on a hot-streak if there’s ever been one, disappoints, caving finally into the “angry teenager” archetype she’s done so well at avoiding thus far in her career.

Perhaps the greatest crime of “Dark Shadows” is its inability to render Johnny Depp, one of the most elastic, evocative actors we have, as a one-dimensional caricature. It’s a trend that’s been occurring with disturbing frequency lately (his track record lately, with “The Tourist”, the new “Pirates of the Caribbean” flick, as well as the aforementioned “Alice in Wonderland” reboot), but Johnny Depp just isn’t being used properly. The fact that this is what Tim Burton opted to get out of him, after eight collaborative efforts together, is a shock. Depp’s character, Barnabas, is very simply, not likable. He’s a cut-and-paste mishmash from other, better Depp characters, save for the sense of personality and morality we got from those guys. Collins, a vampire, is prone to slaughtering a dozen civilians at a time, a fact conveniently overlooked by the film in the pursuit of finding a cut-and-dry “good guy”. I’m not buying it.

With “Dark Shadows”, Tim Burton, a man whose early-to-middle work has haunted my cinematic psyche since the first time I viewed “Edward Scissorhands” as a six-year-old, may have finally lost the essence that infused even his bloodiest, quirkiest films with humanity and depth. “Dark Shadows” is a $150 million declaration that even the best of us run out of ideas eventually. D

“The Avengers” is a freaking hard movie to review. Every time I type a word, I pause and fantasize about the next time I’ll be able to see it and – pun intended – marvel at it all. This film is the culmination of many years of preparation, giving this superhero dream-team their own individual films — Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and so on. Each film had its own set of attributes and faults, but none were the revisionist take of the genre that some clearly aimed for. “The Avengers” may not just be the superhero film of the year, it may be THE superhero film. End-all, be-all. It deftly weaves all of the best parts of each film, bringing it together to make a whole that is not only cohesive, but improving upon everything that came before it.

The driving force and pulsing personality behind “The Avengers” is writer-director Joss Whedon. Here is a man who has made his career on character-driven, snappily-written geek fodder: in essence, the perfect man to handle this material. His personal imprint can be found in every moment of the film — the film’s banter that constantly provokes laughter while further developing its characters, the visually cohesive, no-nonsense style, the frequent double-checking of genre trappings and cliches. It is, however, (also in Whedon tradition), not a wholly original story.

The film’s plot is set into motion somewhat awkwardly. With all the exposition and character re-introductions, the first hour can often be a shaky one, bouncing between dozens of characters and villains and galaxies. The villainous Loki (last seen as “Thor”‘s brother in his own film) has come to Earth to claim ownership over every inferior one of us. Here is where the “Avengers Initiative” comes into play — where Samuel L. Jackson’s eye-patched Nick Fury assembles his all-star squad of worldly defenders.

One of the more interesting aspects of “The Avengers” is very simply, that it GETS that these people shouldn’t be together. These are six people who have little-to-nothing in common, from personalities, to fighting styles, even species. Honestly, save for the 45-minute climatic set-piece (in which New York is destroyed and my fanboy giggling hits a high), “Avengers”‘ most enjoyable aspect is the interplay between these guys. Although they, evidently, must learn to get along for world-saving purposes, for the first 100 minutes it’s a volatile, tempestuous dynamic between them. In other words, distinctly human. And very very witty.

“The Avengers” is a film that, for all of its glitz, glamour, pyrotechnics and Scarlett Johansson donning skin-tight suits, is all about character. There’s so many satisfactory character beats here. So fleshed out are these people that it actually retroactively adds depth to them, in a way their past films failed to do.

Speaking of Johansson, her character, Black Widow, is a perfect example. Debuting in “Iron Man 2″ as one-note eye candy, she here is given a sense of purpose, depth even. Playing master assassin alongside Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, they’re both given their own set-pieces, just as bad-ass as the ones for characters triple their size.

All of the characters in “The Avengers” have been in films of their own. This much I have already covered, both in this review and in those films’ respective critiques. But given the sheer pleasure of watching these dissimilar yet totally awesome characters fight together, I’m not sure I ever want to see them just by themselves ever again. These characters have been given the proper care to allow for satisfying individual arcs and moments, but very simply, WORK together. That’s all I want to convey to you. This shit works. And it’s a miracle. If not for that, go for the biggest single action sequence since “Lord of the Rings” wrapped up in 2003. A-

(Here is where I awkwardly shovel in all manners of nitpicks I couldn’t fluidly discuss in the main body paragraph. There’s some logic holes the size of Bill O’Reilly’s ego at play here. As I said earlier, the first hour feels clunky in editing, given all the information needed to convey. The converted 3-D adds nothing except a slight sense of murkiness. Samuel L. Jackson is underutilized. Why? Dude’s got an eyepatch, come on!)

A group of elite Indonesian cops make their move on a 30-story building stacked from bottom-to-top with vicious, gun-toting drug-lords, who also happen to be masters of obscure hand-combat systems. Sold on “The Raid” yet? Good. Let’s proceed.

“The Raid” is a fast, furious film of absolutely endless action. Of the film’s 100 minutes, I estimate about 85 to be of pure, simple combat. It’s literally everything action fans have ever dreamed of, tied in a tight, well-constructed package by Welsh helmer Gareth Evans. Curiously enough, I can’t seem to tell if the film’s economic storytelling comes from Evans’ conscious decision or lackluster direction. Given how much skill most of the flick is pulled off with, Evans gets the benefit of the doubt.

“The Raid” being what it is, a pure exercise in action, there’s an understandable need to maintain variety in its sequences. Alas, no two fights are the same; variously utilizing the different fighting techniques, automatic weapons, swords, inventive uses of everyday objects (refrigerators and hammers get memorable cameos), and the fact that the characters aren’t much more than a punch or shove away from a 300-foot plunge. What links them all is their resemblance to an adrenaline high, often times provoking a genuinely physical reaction — I caught myself out of breath at moments in the film, flinching at others, laughing at many. Much of this is anchored by lead Iko Uwais, whose considerable charm and martial-arts prowess makes for a truly dynamic, if oft silent, lead.

Evans trims away much of the fat that such a film often wields: gone are the repeated, arbitrary flashbacks to make us “care for” the main character and his backstory, gone is the ridiculous love interest, gone is the incomprehensible camera-work and mismatched editing. Perhaps it’s the fact that this was made for barely a million dollars in Indonesia, but “The Raid” is more savage, more hungry, and more taut than all of its peers. It has no time, no money and no patience for the conventions we’ve adapted to. Just the way I like it. This movie rules. A-

The “American Pie” franchise holds a bit of an awkward spot in the realm of contemporary comedy. Having never seen them until roughly a week ago (funnily enough, at the continued urging of my father), it struck me by how, well, tame it all seemed. It certainly wasn’t a strike against the films’ qualities, which were respectable enough, but it was more of a comment on how these films have forced Hollywood to continually one-up itself in crudeness. It set the bar, and was subsequently deemed outdated about 45 minutes later. “American Reunion” here arrives in a landscape that’s seemingly passed it by, with a once-promising cast of actors whose careers, Seann William Scott aside, seem to have passed them by. It’s a bittersweet affair, and I’m not sure if it knows it.

The franchise kicked off with four nerdy West Michigan boys who vowed to lose their virginity by the end of their senior year. Now they’ve grown into full-fledged men with responsibilities, frustrations and babies: the earnest Jim, sweet Kevin, knuckle-headed Oz, and mysterious Finch. For the first time in quite a while, they’re back together for their high-school reunions, as are all their old (and new) flames.

What results is basically a series of romantic criss-crosses, permeated by a couple of outrageously crude set-pieces. Most exciting is the return of Stifler, the outrageously funny man-child whose charm lands much better in his head than it does in real-life. Stifler really embodies what I dig the most about “American Reunion”: it reunites all the elements and characters that gave the originals their personality, but adds a layer of bittersweetness, even sadness to it. Yeah, Stifler’s every ounce as immature and sexually frustrated as he was in high-school. Nothing’s changed. That’s the point.

Helmed by the directors of the two great American masterpieces “Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle” and its sequel “Escape From Guantanamo Bay”, “American Reunion” admittedly doesn’t have much flash or pizzazz going for it. But two key sequences: a reunion party and subsequent reunion itself, are actually respectably edited and constructed; aptly juggling 10 or so different storylines, anticipating the moment where they all blow up in one another’s face. Many long-running jokes are resurrected: the characters’ penchants for getting with one another’s mothers, Eugene Levy’s glorious eyebrows, et cetera, et cetera.

The fact does stand that these characters are poorly handled, the plot is forgettable and the direction merely competent at peak. But then again, ”American Reunion” is no artful treatise on sorrowful longing for the past. It’s got funny penis and sex jokes, and never presumed to offer otherwise. The fact remains that it’s surprisingly poignant, even reflective at points. It made me feel nostalgia for a franchise I hold no particular emotional attachment to, a feat more impressive than I’d like to admit. B-

There’s really nothing I’m gonna say here that hasn’t been said before in another (probably better) critique or dissection, but the fact that you’re continuing to read this sentence certainly says something about the film’s lasting appeal. Or my writing. Either way.

James Cameron’s “Titanic” was up against almost insurmountable odds –  a $100 million budget that doubled over the shoot, an unsafe set sending crew-members away with illnesses and broken bones, a skeptical press who were all too happy to declare the film a studio-sinking disaster. But, much like the film itself, we all know how it ended. I don’t need to tell you that “Titanic” was a cultural juggernaut, nor that much of the film’s appeal comes from our uneasy anticipation of the name-sake’s disastrous sinking.

“Titanic” is about a boy and a girl who fall in love on a ship and the ship sinks and the boy dies. But you knew that. The cringe-inducing “it’s the journey, not the destination” aphorism holds true here. The appeal and quality of this film is, very simply, watching it all play out. This film fulfilled the fantasies millions of romantics out there for a reason, and that is because it’s a damn good love story.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet still have an undeniable spark as the poor, artistic, dreamy guy and the upper-class teenage girl who’s being shipped off to marry a steel-tycoon. They meet aboard the 1912 luxury liner touted as “unsinkable”. Once the Titanic strikes a massive iceberg, however, everything descends into utter chaos as its a mere matter of hours before everything sinks into the icy Atlantic.

Books have been written about the extensive production values at work here — the impeccable costumes, lavish sets, full-scale recreation of the true-life ship, et-cetera. They’re every bit as excellent as they were when they swept the Oscars 15 years ago. Still ringing less true is writer-director-producer-editor James Cameron’s shoehorned, half-assed “rich people are stiff, poor Irish people rule” class commentary. Never bought it, never will. Billy Zane’s overdone embodiment of the “rich white jerk” archetype still raises eyebrows. I still hate Celine Dion’s song with every fiber in my body.

Although Cameron stumbles in assigning social meaning to the characters, there’s still some interesting stuff he gets across. “Titanic” is an interesting snapshot of the moment that American class-distinction began to fall into chaos, where humble immigrants and noble tycoons alike gained equal stature in society.

Cameron, too, is a fantastic emulator of the sort of old-school, epic Technicolor splendor that Hollywood once embodied. It’s a world of only good and bad, life and death, joy and sadness, beauty and chaos, with very little middle-ground between the two. Absence of subtlety isn’t always a bad thing. Seeing “Titanic” on the big-screen for the second-time, this time older than 13 months, was a revelatory experience: not just because the added third dimension brings an entire layer of depth and splendor to the proceedings, but because it goes to show how, sometimes, works of art with wholly earnest intentions win out. Irony isn’t always prevalent in this world, but I have a feeling that “Titanic” just may be. A

The best science-fiction works are the ones that, by reaching into a far-flung concept or world, serve as commentaries about the way things are with our own world. Think “2001: A Space Odyssey”s exploration of human progress, or on the other end of the tonal spectrum, “Brazil”s satire against the pedantic hair-splitting of bureaucracy. When one isolates “The Hunger Games” from all of the hype and hyperbole, it’s a proud and worthy entry into this genre trend, blending social relevance with an intriguing, thrilling premise. This the first part of a franchise whose popularity approaches “Twilight”-esque levels, with the distinction being that this stuff actually lives up to the hype.

Set in an indeterminate future, “The Hunger Games” is set in a world where, after a nuclear fallout, society is divided into 12 separate, run-down “districts”. Once annually, the government televises a reality show where two children per district fight each other to the death: dubbed, evidently, the ‘hunger games’. Only one can emerge alive. This film is the story of one such unlucky contestant, Katniss Everdeen, and her resourceful fight to stay alive, even as she competes with a childhood friend, Peeta.

Everdeen is brought to life by the insanely talented, beautiful Jennifer Lawrence. Continuing a hot streak of playing strong female characters, Lawrence crafts a great protagonist; a uniquely physical presence who commands the screen every second she’s on it. Playing a weird bunch of supporting characters include the superb Woody Harrelson, playing Katniss’s drunken mentor through the games, Elizabeth Banks chewing the scenery as the bizarrely-dressed, annoyingly-chirpy announcer Effie, and teenage Josh Hutcherson, who as Peeta shows impressive range and personality.

“The Hunger Games” takes a surprisingly lo-fi approach to setting up its dystopian world. While certainly present at moments, this is not a special-effects-heavy film, deciding instead to emphasize building its characters. Director Gary Ross takes a handheld approach that, while distracting during some action sequences, truly builds the dreary, dark look that the world requires. Given his (some would say low) budget of $78 million, Ross managed to create a convincing future environment with personality, texture, and realism. Props to that.

It arrives, too, with a more ambitious premise than most of its sort: the hope to make you think. Ross, and original author/co-screenwriter Suzanne Collins, aren’t particularly subtle in their usage of the games as a metaphor for the kind of senseless, barbaric reality television that we’re accustomed to. Their usage of kids in the midst of this, while a bit of a cheap ploy, certainly raises questions that other franchises wouldn’t dare approach: How much of our cultural programming is filtered through the government? Who holds responsibility for the show: the viewers, the programmers, or participants?

Where “Hunger Games” comes up a bit short is, admittedly, thrills in the visceral department. The film’s focus is not so much on action as it is character and commentary, and while I totally appreciated that, whenever the kid-on-kid showdowns came on-screen I never felt as thrilled as I should have been. Missing, too, is the kind of perverse promise a film with this plot would suggest: in a film where kids my little-sister’s age are fighting to the death, you think there’d be a bit more of a sense of…danger. With a few exceptions, the kids mainly morph into bland, sneering antagonists, not the genuine, scared people you’d imagine in such a scenario.

This film sets itself apart from most other cultural juggernauts not just for its intelligence: but for its passion. This is a film with a capital-M Message: whether its execution of it is entirely successful or, given the comparisons to 2000′s similarly-plotted “Battle Royale”, original, is unimportant. What does stick from this film is its aesthetic, its world-building, and the arrival of a major new character into feminist-film history: Katniss Everdeen, who kicks ass, shoots arrows and subverts futuristic governments better than most. B+

The story of Sarah Palin’s curious ascendency and handling of her 2008 nomination as Republican vice-presidential office, “Game Change” is curious in that the success of its protagonist marks the potential crash-and-burn of Western society. The film’s moments of triumph are our potential moments of despair. It diminishes credibility for a vice-presidential office, one of the the most important positions in the world, to the ability to memorize note-cards and smile for cameras. In the world of “Game Change”, viability for political office is as simple as satisfying cosmetic needs of the right demographics. The world of “Game Change” is a scary world indeed. The world of “Game Change” is our world.

Not to say, of course, that commonplace exaggerations and dramatic punching-up haven’t taken place here.  They have. Julianne Moore’s iteration of Palin, while tonally removed from Tina Fey’s brilliant “Saturday Night Live” impersonation, emulates her physical and verbal traits just as well. Moore nails Palin’s various quirks — the loose consonants, stubby chin, droopy speech, et cetera. For all of the greats she’s worked with — Altman, PTA, Spielberg, Cuaron — director Jay Roach just may have given Moore her juiciest role yet.

The supporting cast’s real-life-imitations are no less impressive. I’d have thought Ed Harris, with his stern features and authoritative voice, wouldn’t be the wisest choice to play John McCain. Oddly enough, he’s a perfect choice. Diminished to something of a background role, McCain mainly serves to be slowly overtaken by his sneering, snarling advisors. Leading this pack is Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt, who funnily enough may be the closest thing to a reasonable main-character.

The film’s helmer, Jay Roach, is the helmer of fare varying from the “Austin Powers” trilogy to the similarly-political HBO fare, “Recount”. His touch as director is mostly invisible, which is to say, an efficient one. Particularly effective was his subtle building of dread as Palin barrels closer towards the final election, although it’s unclear how much of that is Roach’s touch and how much is our prior knowledge of the circumstances.

“Game Change” is a solid slice of politically-charged television, one which effectively shows how potential chaos and disorder can come in the least assuming packages. It’s a subtly scathing critique of political irresponsibility, with a wonderful performance by Julianne Moore at its passionate, grim center. The effect of the film is akin to a bullet whizzing inches away from your ear….if that sounds like your kind of thing. B+

When good high-school movies are made, it’s an occasion rare enough to warrant high praise & attention. Ditto that for buddy-cop movies. But when both of these are pulled off without a hitch while also reviving a long-irrelevant 1980′s television program, it just makes for damn good entertainment. “21 Jump Street” is a shot of adrenaline into three or four different genres; freshening established formulas by acknowledging their camp and then cranking up their goofiness.

An update on the show that gave Johnny Depp his career, “21 Jump Street” takes things in a decidedly comedic direction. Schmidt and Jenko, played by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, went through high-school labelled as the fat nerd and dumb jock, making their partnership in their police academy all the more shocking. Schmidt’s got the brains and Jenko the brawn, and their unlikely dynamic lands the two in an undercover operation dubbed “Jump Street”. In essence, the two are sent back to high-school to infiltrate the “popular kids” and shut down production of a new synthetic drug spreading throughout the school.

In an unlikely twist of stereotypes though, Schmidt ends up with the popular kids and Jenko with the nerds, forcing them to re-think both their roles in the operation and as friends, in general. “21 Jump Street” seems to be full of little twists like this, ones that play with our expectations while sticking with the general structure we expect. This sort of formula-tinkering affects every aspect of “21 Jump Street”, starting with the two leads, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.

It goes without saying that these two are absolute dynamite together, with the sort of expert timing and dead-panning audiences came to expect of the silent era. Perhaps most importantly is that the two have an adorable bromance, one that the audience roots for at all times and against all odds. But the two are not afraid to tinker with their public personas, Tatum in particular really poking fun at the dumb, raw masculine image he’s built up for himself. Both leads really re-define their skill palate, with Tatum demonstrating comedic chops and Hill a tremendous writing skill. (co-writing the script with “Project X”/”Scott Pilgrim” vet Michael Bacall)

If nothing else I admired the tremendous energy the crew brought to the picture: There’s a sort of goofy, happy-go-lucky tone to the humor here that makes it feel a lot more spontaneous and in-the-moment. In other words, more believable. The care taken to develop the side-characters is appreciated: from Ice Cube’s foul-mouthed, black sergeant who frequently brings up how foul-mouthed and black he is, to Brie Larson as the plucky romantic interest for Hill’s character, and Dave Franco as the cocky, pretentious popular kid whose illegal product sets the plot into motion. Dave is every ounce as charming and talented as brother James, by the way. The film also sports a killer celebrity cameo, the less of which I reveal the better.

The action in this film is surprisingly confident, a memorable middle-act highway chase stimulating both laughter and adrenaline. What surprised me a bit was the sloppiness of editing at points: it’s fairly obvious a wealth of material has been left out of the final cut, leaving unexplained beats where character-driven moments should have been, leaving pauses in lieu of comedy. The script seemed fairly tight in its vision, so perhaps directors Phil Lord & Chris Miller are at fault here. But no matter: They’ve crafted an energetic, fresh vision out of many parts stale and formulaic, with as many belly-laughs per minute as I can recall in a while. B+