Metacritic reviews

Jonah Hill is masterful at delivering an absurd story with so much sweetness, the nonsense ceases to get in the way.

This movie embraces everything that should make it lousy, calling out itself for aping the source's bad ideas then flipping the script with meta precision.

Not since Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg teamed up in "The Other Guys" has an onscreen pairing proved as comically rewarding as the inspired partnership of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.

21 Jump Street has that "Anchorman" experimental-chaos vibe, with all the hit-and-miss moments that implies. It's completely lunatic and sort of a mess. It's also the funniest high-school comedy to come out of Hollywood in ages.

Like many almost-great comedies, 21 Jump Street is frontloaded with the best go-for-broke gags and lines.

It has a bad, slapstick first act but by midpoint becomes strangely compelling, tapping into the fantasy of reliving one's high-school years (which did a number on us all) and getting it right.

By casting Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as fish-out-of-water buffoons, the irreverent result feels fresher than most '80s-show reboots, effectively flipping the address Johnny Depp made famous.

Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller get nearly everything -- the tone, the self-referential nods to the shoe and the dead-solid-perfect surprises -- just right.

Though these mismatched cops bounce well off each other, Tatum, in his first comedic lead role, is the better performer, both more riotous and affecting.

The longer this "Abbott and Costello's Lethal Weapon" goes on, the more the fun dissipates - until a queasily violent climax, which, naturally, fully embraces genre stereotypes rather than dismantling them.