Combine that with the fact that it features great performances from Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill and Ice Cube, and it’s clear that directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller caught lightning in a bottle.
The DNA shared between Baywatch and 21 Jump Street is plain to see, and it’s not hard to understand why the latter has become such a successful franchise.
Beyond that, it’s also one of the few comedies to produce a worthy sequel in recent years.
Using an overwhelmingly meta approach to its source material, 21 Jump Street took a relatively dumb concept (cops masquerading as high school students) and used it as a means to provide some incredibly biting commentary on puberty, high school and pop culture of the 2000s.