Does Hollywood even recognize and appreciate the stinging jabs we movie-going public take at the industry for its absurd need to build a franchise out of any movie that makes a buck? 21 Jump Street caught us off guard a couple years ago with its gut-busting revisit to the classic Stephen J. Cannell TV series premise of over-aged but youthful-looking cops going undercover into a high school to bust up a drug ring. In that film, actors Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum riffed on action comedies while the budding relationship between their two cops took center stage. In the revisit, the filmmakers take that relationship to the next level by exploring what it takes to make a relationship last. Get it? Sequels are like relationships; you can attempt to live on the past, but it’s never going to be the same. You’ve got to re-invent yourself. The film’s running gag is about how movie sequels get too over-the-top and therefore usually suck. So, what does 22 Jump Street do? It goes over the top with everything, and even ends with a series of fake movie posters that advertise the dozens of coming sequels such as a futuristic sci-fi version called 2121 Jump Street.

Having made their way through high school (the second time) by successfully busting up a drug ring, thirty-somethings Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) are again assigned to infiltrate a school, but this time they go undercover at a local college. Deputy Chief Hardy (Nick Offerman) reminds the partners that “back then nobody gave more than a casual yawn to the announcement of the Jump Street reboot, but you got lucky. So, the department has invested a lot of money to make sure the Jump Street program keeps going.”

It’s this kind of self-aware humor that both makes the film by laughing at itself before we get a chance to, and nearly breaks it by violating the comedy credo that sarcasm is best when delivered in small doses. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie) ride a fine line but stay just this side of too much, while Hill and Tatum display a once-in-a-career chemistry… again.

Once embedded on the college campus, Jenko joins the football team and begins a bro-mance with a young, fit quarterback and fraternity brother named Zook (Wyatt Russell), while clingy Schmidt finds his friends in the hippy-dippy art society. Being the jealous type, Schmidt is hurt by the thought of having to share his partner with Zook, so an hilarious session with the school’s couples counselor becomes another recurring gag.

Ice Cube reprises his role as Captain Dickson, the constantly-screaming head of the Jump Street undercover cops unit who, staying with the film’s themes, takes his “angry black captain” into parody territory by top-notching all other angry black cops from all other buddy cop movies. The biggest lift comes from his constant references to the excessiveness of movie sequels. One joke in which he complains about the police department giving him an $800 pair of sneakers even though his feet are never seen behind his desk goes over particularly well.

While the non-stop meta-jokes and wanton excessiveness are refreshing gags and frankly quite brilliant, especially in today’s world of out-of-control movie franchising, the whole thing begins to wear a bit thin about halfway through. Also, a few dead sequences are carried on a bit too long as Miller and Long seem shortsighted on exactly how long to carry on with a joke. But all-in-all 22 Jump Street has a lot of fun with itself and so do we.

(Released by Columbia Pictures and rated “R” by MPAA.)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com.