21 Jump Street

The knee-jerk response to the notion of Jonah Hill starring in an update of Tiger Beat-cop show 21 Jump Street (besides some folks’ ingrained aversion to Jonah Hill) focused primarily on two things: its reviving of the ridiculous premise of having obvious adults going undercover as high school students, and the film being yet another winking, postmodern reboot of retro pop culture. The first red-band trailer addresses both of those criticisms directly, with several characters noting that Hill’s musclebound partner Channing Tatum is clearly way too old and sinewy to be a teenager (though so far Hill evades attention), and a meta reference to reviving a “canceled ’80s cop program” coming directly from the mouth of their superior, played by Parks And Recreation’s Nick Offerman. Whether acknowledging the inherent silliness of its concept or owning up to the cashing-in by some of modern comedy’s most beloved figures is enough to win those early naysayers over will be up to them to decide. But in its favor, the trailer does have Ice Cube bitching about the “Twittersphere.”