Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes 22 Jump Street has an approval rating of 84% based on 224 reviews, with an average rating of 7.00/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Boasting even more of the bromantic chemistry between its stars – and even more of the goofy, good-natured humor that made its predecessor so much fun – 22 Jump Street is the rare sequel that improves upon the original." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, higher than the 'B' received by its predecessor.
Inkoo Kang of The Wrap gave the film a positive review, saying "If 22 isn't as trim and tight as its predecessor, it's certainly smarter and more heartfelt. Whether this sequel is better than the original is up for debate, but the franchise has definitely grown up." Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B−, saying "Hill's neurotic-motormouth act and Tatum's lovable-lunkhead shtick still shoot giddy sparks." Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film three out of four stars, saying "This is the ultimate meta movie. The repetition is exactly the point."
Jocelyn Noveck of the Associated Press gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Hill and Tatum ... have a Laurel-and-Hardy-like implausible chemistry that keeps you laughing pretty much no matter what they're doing." Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic gave the film four out of five stars, saying "What makes it all work is the chemistry between Hill and Tatum, which in turn, of course, is a rich source of the film's humor." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three out of four stars, saying "The peculiar sweetness of 21 Jump Street has taken a hiatus in 22 Jump Street, a brazen sequel that's both slightly disappointing and a reliable, often riotous 'laffer' in the old Variety trade-magazine parlance." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three out of four stars, saying "22 Jump Street is damn funny, sometimes outrageously so. It laughs at its own dumb logic and invites us in on the fun." Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Like its stars, Jump Street gets extra credit for getting by on charm while sticking to the rules." Ian Buckwalter of NPR gave the film a seven out of ten, saying "What separates 22 Jump Street from sequel mediocrity is that everyone's in on the joke."
Sean Fitz-Gerald of The Denver Post gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Jump Street knows you know about the predictability and cheapness of sequels and rip-offs – and in this case, to avoid the downfalls of other summer comedy sagas, embracing that problem might have been the best move for this absurd, unique franchise." Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review, saying "This sequel's spoof of its predecessor's riff on the original 1980s-era buddy-cop TV show coalesces into a raucous, raunchy, irreverent, imperfect riot." Ty Burr of The Boston Globe gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying "Lord and Miller are on a roll, and there may be no better moviemakers at playing to our modern need for irony – at giving us the entertainment we crave while acknowledging our distrust of it." Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald gave the film three out of four stars, saying "There's something going on at the edges of the frame in practically every scene of 22 Jump Street, a testament to the care and attention to detail directors Lord and Miller bring to this potentially silly material." Stephen Whitty of the Newark Star-Ledger gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "At what point is sarcasm just a cheap substitute for wit? Exactly when does joking about how all sequels are just lame, repetitive cash-grabs start to suggest that maybe yours is, too? Actually, in this case, about 40 minutes in." Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Though I enjoyed enormously this latest offering in the rebooted Jump franchise, it's the effortless, unexpected bromance/partnership between the two unlikely undercover cops is what makes this franchise work."
James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "There are times when 22 Jump Street is borderline brilliant. Unfortunately, those instances are outnumbered by segments that don't work for one reason or another." Jaime N. Christley of Slant Magazine gave the film two out of four stars, saying "As funny and batshit insane as the movie often is, the fact that 22 Jump Street knows it's a tiresome sequel doesn't save it from being a tiresome sequel, even as Lord and Miller struggle to conceal the bitter pill of convention in the sweet tapioca pudding of wall-to-wall jokes." Scott Tobias of The Dissolve gave the film three and a half stars out of five, saying "22 Jump Street squeezes every last drop of comic inspiration it can get from Tatum and Hill, as well as the very notion of a sequel to such a superfluous enterprise."
Steve Persall of the Tampa Bay Times gave the film a B, saying "22 Jump Street is a mixed bag of clever spoofery and miscalculated outrageousness. The unveiled homoeroticism of practically all interaction between Jenko and Schmidt is amusing to the point when it isn't." Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post gave the film three out of five stars, saying "This is a sequel that wears its well-worn formula, mocking inside jokes and gleeful taste for overkill proudly, flying the high-lowbrow flag for audiences that like their comedy just smart enough to be not-too-dumb." Scott Foundas of Variety gave the film a positive review, saying "22 Jump Street hits far more often than it misses, and even when it misses by a mile, the effort is so delightfully zany that it's hard not to give Lord and Miller an 'A' for effort."
Peter Howell of the Toronto Star gave the film three out of four stars, saying "If it seemed Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill couldn't possibly exceed their over-the-top buddy cop antics of 21 Jump Street, you lost that bet." Tom Long of The Detroit News gave the film a B−, saying "There's no real reason 22 Jump Street should work. Yet it does." Joe Williams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch gave the film three out of four stars, saying "A self-aware sequel has to hop over hurdles to keep from swallowing its own tail, but the sharp writing and tag-team antics lift 22 Jump Street to a high level." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film three out of four stars, saying "22 Jump Street is exactly what comedy is today. It's coarse, free-flowing and playful." In 2016, James Charisma of Playboy ranked the film #13 on a list of 15 Sequels That Are Way Better Than The Originals.
