“21 Jump Street” is the best movie I’ve reviewed in what seems like forever. It’s not perfect, but it is a heck of a lot better than several other films I’ve seen recently.

The pairing of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum is inspired and produces some great scenes. Tatum isn’t known for making comedies, but he shows his comedic chops here. The action and comedy are mixed together well and make for a fun film with a thrilling bite.

When the movie opens, we see Hill and Tatum in their high school days. Tatum as Greg Jenko, the popular jock, and Hill as Morton Schmidt, the smart kid who dresses like Eminem trying desperately to be cool, don’t get along well. Jenko is a nightmare for Schmidt and won’t ever let him forget who the actual “cool” kids are at school.

We flash forward several years and see both Jenko and Schmidt training at a police academy. Jenko is blessed with crazy athleticism, but zero brains, and Schmidt gets a 100 percent on the written tests, but is athletically challenged to say the least. They decide to put their past differences aside, team up and help each other graduate.

After becoming partners, they quickly mess up their first arrest and are assigned by their captain, a hilarious Nick Offerman, to a revived program located out of 21 Jump Street.

The two arrive at the address and discover that it’s a secret police base. They find out from the captain there, a scene-stealing Ice Cube, that they were put on this assignment because they are young enough to look like “Justin Bieber.” Their mission is to go undercover as students at a local high school, find the dealers and suppliers of a new synthetic drug and stop it from spreading to other schools.

Hill and Tatum were great at playing the opposite roles you’d expect them to have once they went back to high school.

When they get there, they’re both surprised to see high school is totally different than they remember, and all the kids Tatum’s character would have picked on in his day are now cool. Hill fits right in with the popular kids and Tatum has to hang out with science nerds.

Another strong aspect of this film is the work of the supporting characters. Offerman, best known as Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation, is only in the movie for about five minutes, but everything he said made me laugh.

Ice Cube, ironically playing a cop here after rapping about how much he hated them in his youth, just yells most of the time, but the things he says to Hill and Tatum are laugh-out-loud funny.

Jake Johnson, best known as Nick on the show “New Girl,” is perfectly cast as the stressed-out principal of the school Hill and Tatum enroll at.

The only real letdowns are the high school students Hill and Tatum have to be friends with. They weren’t really that interesting and were disappointingly unfunny.

I don’t think there’s a movie I’ve seen with Hill in it that I didn’t like. He’s always amusing and has a great run going with his comedy film choices. Plus, he’s got an Oscar nominee for his first dramatic role in “Moneyball.” The guy is on an absolute roll.

Tatum is the real surprise for me here. The only movies I’d seen him in were chick flicks like “The Vow” or lame fighting movies like the lazily named “Fighting.” I hope he sticks to more action/comedy hybrids like this because he has a real knack for the role.

“21 Jump Street” is slick, funny, and well-paced. The movie is definitely worth checking out in theaters.