Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: 22 Jump Street (2014)

This is topic 22 Jump Street (2014) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=002052

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 06-13-2014, 05:37 PM:

CINEMA: Moore Warren, Moore, OK
AUDITORIUM: 7
PRESENTATION: Dolby Digital Cinema/THX
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: None [Cool]

RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)

THE PLOT: There's a new drug on campus. Wackiness ensues.

There seems to be about ten percent script and ninety percent improvisation here. And most of the scripted stuff is a repeat stunt from the reboot where the cast pokes fun at the fact this is a sequel to a reboot that wasn't expected to be as successful as it was. Overall, "Cannonball Run 2" feels more thought out than this.

This thing is unbelievably stupid and silly. It's also pretty funny. Two of the scenes (first where the parents meet and then a follow-up) are the two funniest scenes to grace the screen this year. These scenes alone are worth the price of admission.

Richard Grieco reprises his character from the TV show in a cameo during the credits (where they preview the next twenty-plus Jump Street sequels). IMDB claims Vietnamese Jesus was played by Dustin Nguyen, who as far as I recall was just a statue.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 06-13-2014, 11:15 PM:

well wow, just ruin the cameo surprise...

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 07-16-2014, 06:56 AM:

The first one had the balls to turn a rather morale-laden show into a parody of itself.

This one has the balls to blatantly copy the script of the first movie and then pull jokes about it all movie long. Laced it with a truckload of inside and adolecent jokes and.... well, somehow it totally worked.

Yeah, albeit the repetitive concept of this thing, it is funny and the chemistry between Jenko and Schmidt is still there.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-25-2014, 10:45 PM:

Yes, like Sam says, unbelievably silly and stupid with no social redeaming value -- you know, also UNBELIEVABLY FUNNY. This is stuff that would make me and my buddy's ladies get up and walk out of the theatre and leave us sitting there (so we left them at home), but hands down, the funnest damn thing I have seen in a LONG time. And the meet-the-parents' scene is indeed piss-in-your-pants funny. It's just that these two guys are sooo natural together, as good as any of the great duo comedians in the style of Laurel and Hardy, but with even a more palpable sense of genuine commradarie and bonding, which actually makes you able to care about the characters. You actually could believe that Hill and Channing are best friends in real life. It makes the whole thing quite endearing, actually.

Some of the gags work and some you just roll your eyes and moan at the punch line, but no matter, because it all comes so fast that there is another gag right on top of the last one, and it more than likely will be laughing out loud funny.

Nothing demonstrates how much better it is seeing a movie in a theatre rather than at home than hearing a couple of hundred people laughting out loud in unison with you.

4.5/5

But wait, then there's the BIG technical problem; I don't know if this was a projection problem at this theatre (UA/Regal in Sheapshead Bay, Brooklyn NY) or the way the movie was processed or compressed or whatever when it was authored, but visually, it was downright disturbing in certain places. The best I can describe it is that whenever there was fast movement, especially in the football sequences and the spring break sequence on the beach, fast movement had this horrible video look -- a kind of staccato studder strobe effect. At one point I actually had to look away as it was so uncomfortable to look at. Nothing could look more video-ish and less film-like. Did anyone else notice this? It was so bad that if there were anyone in the theatre suffering from epilepsy, it would have caused them to have a seisure. Seriously. Did anyone else notice this phenomenon?

Anyway, for technical it gets only 2.5/5

Oh yah, and the image in that theatre (#5) was underlit -- not by a lot but I noticed it. I can't imagine what 3D looks like there.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-26-2014, 01:43 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
Oh yah, and the image in that theatre (#5) was underlit -- not by a lot but I noticed it. I can't imagine what 3D looks like there.

Prob a SONY SRX-R320 twin lens unit with a 4k bulb that is darker than sin with less than 300 hours on it due to the poor exhaust/ventilation system these units are known for.

The construction of the chip for twin lens usage is downright horrible...along with fighting with a silver screen with its light directional properties.

Pictures always looks darker on a silver screen than a matte white screen due to the directional properties.

-Monte

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 07-26-2014, 04:25 PM:

I remember reading an article about cinema history that stated that silver screens were originally used in theatres to make up for the fact that there wasn't a lot of light reaching the screen and white screens came along later after better optics were invented.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-28-2014, 08:32 AM:

When Fox introduced CinemaScope, part of the package along with the mag sound and scope lens was a lenticular silver screen which Fox had manufactured and had to be used. They felt the high gain silver was needed to compensate for the fact that the light was now being spread over twice the width of the screen, not to mention the fact that those first generation anamorphic attachments were super inefficient and just sucked up light.

You would think that scope images then would have been plagued with hot-spots, same as what the 3D screens today suffer from. That was not the case because the lenticular structure of the silver screens surface (Fox called them Miracle Mirror, or something like that) dispersed the light much more evenly so they didn't have that typical high-gain directionality/hot-spotting problem that non-lenticular 3D silver screens have today.

Some time ago a MDI salesman told me that they were working on manufacturing a lenticular silver screen for 3D that would eliminate or substantially reduce hot-spotting and thus it wouldn't mar 2D presentation. Not sure if that ever came to pass.