This week at the movies: 21 Jump Street gets a lewd makeover; funny friends have a baby; and Robert De Niro plays a different kind of taxi driver.
21 Jump Street
A great deal has been changed about 21 Jump Street, the 80s TV show that made Johnny Depp a star. For one thing, 21 Jump Street is now a movie and it has gotten a lot raunchier. In place of pretty boy Depp is pretty boy Channing Tatum. He’s also gained a nerdy sidekick in Jonah Hill (seen here in his brief “skinny phase.”) The premise is still very much the same: they have to go undercover at a high school and suss out some new, weird drug the kids are into. Of course, they break all the rules (never get high on your own supply) and are constantly getting in trouble with their boss, played by Ice Cube, while navigating the perilous waters of high school (in a cute twist, Tatum is the geek, and Hill hangs with the cool kids.)
Perfect For: Fans of Superbad, The Hangover, and Bridesmaids rejoice: this one’s for you.
What the Critics Say: Muy bueno! The audience likes it, the critics like it, everyone’s happy. Entertainment Weekly: “It's part homage and part wink at the past. It jokes about high school but is also a sensitive sociological study of those crucial years. It bridges slapstick and action. It's quick-witted with its pop references.” Chicago Tribune: “What was the last stupid Hollywood comedy -- good-stupid, not stupid-stupid -- to offer actual, audible, verifiable big laughs?” New York mag: “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.”
Our Take: We know what we’re seeing this weekend.
Friends With Kids
Jennifer Wesfteldt directs, writes and stars in this feature about a group of yuppies in New York City who are contemplating whether or not to have children. Two thirds of the posse (played by John Hamm, Kristin Wiig, Chris O’Dowd, and Maya Rudolph) has yet to embark on the child-rearing portion of their lives, while their two unattached friends (Wesfteldt and Adam Scott) decide to forgo the usual track and have a baby together, even though they aren’t dating. They will be probably be dating by the end, though.
Perfect For: Romcom fans who want something a little drier and with more intellectual heft than the usual sappy lovefest.
What the Critics Say: They are pretty meh. USA Today approves: “It offers the rare combination of romance, humor, an inventive conceit and social relevance, without adhering slavishly to rom-com conventions.” But Slate doesn’t: “Pleasant but overfamiliar.”
Our Take: We like the cast, love seeing Hamm and Wiig together again, and we liked Wesfteldt’s debut effort, Kissing Jessica Stein, so we’d probably see it.
Being Flynn
Robert De Niro plays the down-and-out estranged father of Nick Flynn (Paul Dano) in this adaptation of the memoir Another Bu___it Night In Suck City. Though the two men have been apart for decades, they are both writers, and find each other in less-than ideal circumstances; the son is working at a homeless shelter when his father walks in, and they have an awkward reconnection. Deep stuff.
Perfect For: Have you been hankering for a film where Robert De Niro actually acts in a good role like he used to and not in some bad comedy? Here you go.
What the Critics Say: The reviews are pretty well split, but some key critics are weighing in on the positive side. NPR writes: “Writer-director [Paul] Weitz finds grace notes everywhere, plunging headlong into a scarily persuasive skid row, then seeking more stable ground for his characters.” The New York Times writes: “Sometimes awkwardly and sometimes gracefully, “Being Flynn” charts a middle course between the rough honesty of its source and the sentimental triteness of the much worse movie it could have been.”
Our Take: It’s depressing, and introspective, and deals with drug and alcohol abuse and has Robert De Niro playing a cab driver. We’re totally going.
