Review: 22 Jump Street (2014)

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Director: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Starring: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum

There is no reason at all that 21 Jump Street should have worked the way that it did. At best, it should have been a marginally funny but sort of forgettable way to kill an hour and forty minutes, the sort of movie you watch if it comes on TV and there's nothing else on. Instead it was pretty much awesome, setting a bar for television to film adaptations that is almost impossibly high. Magic happened with the first film, so what were the chances of the follow-up, 22 Jump Street, being anything but an utter disappointment? I don't know what the odds were exactly, but I know that somehow the team behind the franchise has found a way to make lightning strike twice. 22 Jump Street is a great summer movie, an entertainment of the very first order.

Review: The Lego Movie (2014)

* * *
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

For every rule, there is an exception that proves it. The rule, in this case, is that good movies don't come out of games and toy lines, that the added dimension of commercial interest - the film needs to be successful on its own terms, as well as work as advertising for the source product - smothers any deeper elements, leaving behind nothing of artistic value. The Lego Movie is a 100 minute ad for Lego, but it's also a film which justifies its own existence by telling a solid story, taking a well-trod narrative blueprint and putting a funny, referential, and sometimes compelling twist on it. But I suppose at this point we should expect nothing less from writer/directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who are developing what appears to be a golden touch.