Review of 21 Jump Street (2012) by Shiira — 01 May 2012

"They hate me." In the director's cut of Almost Famous, we find out how much. On a high school marquee, in black caps, the message of the day reads: "William Miller is too young to drive or f***.

" The other students are pitiless toward the victim of this practical joke, but William manages a brief smile as he traverses the parking lot, alone, armed with a copy of Creem. Music makes him strong.

During class, we see the boy's shrine, a blue portfolio covered with the names of his heroes in a graffiti-esque collage created with Bic ink. It's a work in progress, as we glimpse the starry-eyed child putting the final touches on the "n".

William may love Led Zeppelin, but he's smart enough not to emulate Robert Plant. His hair is decidedly un-golden god-like. Over the hills and far away, in another high school, another generation, Schmidt, with his close-cropped bleached do, and bling, cultivates, none too successfully, the Eminem look.

By embodying the machismo of the rapper, Schmidt works up the courage to approach a girl about the upcoming prom. Before the official invite is issued, though, the hottie stops him. That's because Schmidt is not Slim Shady; he's a nerd, and not even slim.

Five years later, when the rookie cop and his buff partner go undercover as students, Schmidt's eventual transformation into a popular kid, retroactively, casts Fast Times at Ridgemont High as a sort of sequel to Almost Famous, because when Cameron Crowe returned to school as an investigative journalist, he was fully-formed, no longer the naive hero, the alter-ego of his bildungsroman, but actually somebody who was cool enough to infiltrate the cliques that mattered, after years of covering bands that mattered.

In the Amy Heckerling film, Crowe doesn't have a stand-in; he's the omniscient student who knows Linda, the queen bee, well enough, apparently, to learn about her best friend Stacy, who ends up at an abortion clinic after a series of flings.

Crowe's fictional self, while no longer a stranger to sex, due to the adult education he receives from the "Band-Aids" during a stopover in Greenville as a RS correspondent covering Stillwater, the then-screenwriter, despite being privy to an up close and personal look at the debauched lives of the rich and famous, nevertheless, still must have flinched like the rest of us, as Linda and Stacey talked graphically about sex in the cafeteria.

Being 23, the scribe could only fantasize about Linda(like Brad), who in the film, emerges from the pool in a red bikini. Whose dream was that really? Because Crowe is unseen, the ethos of the film never gets addressed, like it does in 21 Jump Street, when Sgt.

Dickson warns the cops about being chaste while on assignment, faintly echoing the advice given by Lester Bangs to his protege. When bridging the two films together(Almost Famous & Fast Times...), it's easy to imagine Crowe refashioning his mentor's words into something along the lines of "don't make friends with the high school girls.

" "Doug", the track star and theater brat, keeps a professional distance, but barely, when he comes perilously close to kissing Molly, at the moment that their prom plans get verified. She is Wendy to his Peter Pan, akin to Crowe and Ann Wilson(of Heart).

As a point of reference, Schmidt fulfills his Eminem dreams of yesteryear by singing "I've Gotta CROW", rhyming like Mary Martin circa 1955. The "real Slim Shady" stands up. He's a romantic.

The film's greatest irony is that Doug becomes popular by being himself, not a gangsta, even though 21 Jump Street pays homage to Donnie Brasco, none more cleverly than when the cop calls Molly on the phone, and nearly blows his cover.

Whereas Joe Pistone learns that a wise guy never carries a wallet, Doug, in so many words, is told to text-message like any savvy teenager living in the digital age. Lefty Ruggiero represents the FBI agent, giving "Donnie" the credibility he needs to pervade the inner sanctum of a mafia crew.

To his chagrin, Joe becomes Sonny Black's right-hand man. Similarly, Eric, a drug dealer, takes a shine to Doug(angering "Brad"), and introduces him to his supplier. Both men, in the process, lose themselves in the subculture, crossing the line from observer to participant, in which they find their humanity and attudinization melding into one.

For the cop, this embarkation begins at a house party, where he gets stabbed during a melee between rival high school drug factions. The experience imprints him. In that instant, he becomes a stud. Likewise, Joe's metamorphosis into Donnie is inaugurated at a Japanese restaurant, where a waiter nearly gets pummeled to death in the bathroom, after the niceties of culture nearly blows his cover.

Later, a lesson in mass vivisection pushes Joe to the brink. In Schmidt's case, it's a college application he plans on filling out. For Crowe, it could have been the moment that Linda sticks the carrot in her mouth.