Parody that can be tedious at times

"IT'S always worse the second time around," says Deputy Chief Hardy (Nick Offerman), the police captain who reassigns cops Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) to the undercover cops-in-schools programme called 22 Jump Street - and it's hard to disagree with him.

The twist in this breezy, irreverent summer comedy and numerically superior sequel to 21 Jump Street (2012) is that the filmmakers readily subscribe to that philosophy as well, taking every opportunity (starting with the title) to poke fun at themselves while ensuring that the audience is always in on the joke. Still, there's something annoying about a movie that is a little too smug about its self-mocking tone.

The odd-couple cop pairing - Schmidt is nerdy and socially inept while Jenko is a jock who seriously lacks brain power - is something that audiences never seem to tire of (see Exhibit A: the Lethal Weapon series) but 22 Jump Street takes it to another level (and I don't just mean going from high school to college).