21 Jump Street
Tagline: The only thing getting blown tonight is their cover.
When you look back on Johnny Depp’s storied career, you have to remind yourself that he once appeared as a bright young thing in the 1980s TV cop show 21 Jump Street. And pretty much 21 years on, the inevitable big-screen version is having its day, though you’ll have to check it out for yourself to see if Depp is good enough to acknowledge his past and show up.
The stars are those current bright young things, Channing Tatum, last seen getting his butt kicked in Haywire and acting all lovey-dovey in The Vow, and Jonah Hill, last seen picking up a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor nomination for Moneyball. They’re sent undercover to try and bust a high-school drug ring, which means that they have to pretend to be teenagers and relive their school years, when they didn’t exactly see eye to eye.
Hill certainly has plenty invested in the movie, considering that he co-wrote it with Michael Bacall (who wrote the woefully under-appreciated Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World) and early word is that they’ve done themselves proud. And coming in for equally high praise is the (some might say) inspired directing decision to give 21 Jump Street to Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who did such a great job on the animated Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs (seriously, go see it). Put it like this: John Carter director, Andrew Stanton, must be looking on with considerable envy.
Perhaps the expectation level was on the low side but the reviews have gone through the roof (86% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing). “The funniest high-school comedy to come out of Hollywood in ages,” trumpets Empire. “The helmers make slick use of their new live-action collaborators. Considering that hardly anyone was asking for a 21 Jump Street reboot, they’ve put their own playful stamp on it,” is Variety‘s verdict. “Sails on the strength of some of its joke writing, and the chemistry and use of its stars,” says Screen Daily. By the sounds of it, even if Depp wanted to be fully involved in any follow-up, he’d have a hard job getting the gig.
MORE: 21 Jump Street: Rude Fun at Fantasy High
Seeking Justice
Tagline: Would You Cross The Line For Vengeance?
If it’s easy to forget that Johnny Depp made his name on 21 Jump Street, you have to literally pinch yourself to not forget that Nicolas Cage once won a Best Actor Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. In recent years, his film choices haven’t exactly been of the same caliber and the trend looks set to continue with Seeking Justice, which sounds like the kind of title studios come up with just to attract Cage to the role in the first place.
On this occasion, he plays Will Gerard, a happily married man whose life gets turned upside-down when his wife (January Jones) is brutally attacked while leaving work. Obviously, rather than allow the authorities to investigate, our Nic becomes implicated in an underground vigilante operation by agreeing to an offer from a stranger (Guy Pearce, who should know better than to appear in such hokum) to exact vengeance.
Unfortunately for Cage, he won’t need to dust off his tuxedo ahead of next year’s Oscars. The movie “is about as memorable as a morning shower,” claims Time Out London. “Will be of interest mainly to those tireless individuals who compile clip reels of Cage’s worst moments and upload them to YouTube,” notes the Daily Telegraph. But the Observer (whose critic Philip French has forgotten more about cinema than we’ll ever learn) was in a more forgiving mood: “It works well enough, and at the end the makers know that their film invites the audience to have its irony rations and eat them.” Irony Rations? Before you know it, that will be confirmed as the title of Cage’s next movie or autobiography. Or both.
MORE: Nicolas Cage Might Be a Vampire. Or So One eBay Seller Says
Detachment
Another member of the Oscar Best Actor alumni, Adrien Brody (The Pianist), is the lead in Detachment. He plays Henry Barthes, an educator with a special ability to connect with his students. But by spending his days as a substitute teacher, he avoids any emotional connections by never staying anywhere long enough to form a meaningful attachment. But perhaps all that’s about to change; that’s the beauty of the movies — you never know what’s around the corner.
So perhaps it’s for the best if you don’t read the following reviews too carefully if you want Detachment to be as diverting as possible. “In a wonderfully soupy timeline, Brody tries to provide some semblance of hope to kids who’d rather be angry and the world and each other than risk failure by genuinely caring,” writes the New York Press. “Harrowing depiction of the American educational system features a superb performance by Adrien Brody,” is the verdict of the Hollywood Reporter. But Variety is more skeptical, noting that “Brody is brilliant, but can’t save the Book of Job proceedings from tilting over into the ludicrous.”
Casa de mi Padre
One man who might be considered an unlikely bet to win an Oscar is Will Ferrell. But he certainly knows how to connect with his audience, and not even a Spanish-language title (with dialogue to match) is likely to put them off.
In Casa de mi Padre, his charcter of Armando Alvarez has lived and worked on his father’s ranch in Mexico his whole life. But as the ranch comes up against financial difficulties, Armando’s brother Raul (Diego Luna) rocks up with his new fiancée, Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez). And what’s more, this knight in shining armor is willing to settle all his father’s debts. But what he hasn’t banked on is Armando falling for Sonia, or the family finding themselves in a war with Mexico’s most feared drug lord, Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal).
But where there’s a Will, there isn’t really a way for the critics to fall for the movie’s charms. TIME’s Mary Pols makes her feelings known early on in her review: “As a test case though, Casa de mi Padre is flawed in that it wouldn’t be particularly enticing in any language.” The Village Voice is considerably more charitable, noting, “There has always been a flamboyant, sartorial element to Ferrell’s comedy, and it’s clear that he and director Matt Piedmont, a former SNL writer, love the melodrama they’re parodying.” But Roger Ebert leaves us in no doubt that Will’s casa is not his casa: “The movie is only 84 minutes long, including credit cookies, but that is quite long enough.”
NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: It’s doubtful you’ll be Seeking Justice or Will Ferrell’s latest. So if you don’t fancy attaching to Detachment, that leaves our clear choice of 21 Jump Street.