You may remember that back in March, Fox pulled their promos for Neighborhood Watch, a Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn/Jonah Hill comedy being directed by the Lonely Island’s Akiva Shaffer, at least in Florida, as a result of similarities between that trailer and the Trayvon Martin shooting. For good measure, they even renamed it The Watch. Luckily the movie is more about aliens anyway, so now instead of old guys cruising their neighborhood looking for hoody-wearing troublemakers, we see them hanging around the supermarket trying to decide who might be an alien. In a nicely-meta twist, we even see Vince Vaughn’s character ridiculing a child for not knowing how to eat ice cream properly. HAS OUR VINCE VAUGHN PHOTO-MEME BECOME SELF-AWARE??

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Late yesterday, commenter Larry emailed me saying he’d just seen the trailer for Neighborhood Watch play before a screening he was at, writing “Maybe it’s me, but I think they’re well f*cked if they don’t redo the marketing in light of Trayvon Martin. This thing is a hoodie and Skittles away from being a hate crime.” Watching Jonah Hill shoot an imaginary pistol at a terrified black mailman, it was hard not to agree. It turns out Fox may have been getting some of the same emails, because not 10 minutes later, word hit that they’d pulled the promo from theaters in Florida.

The studio tells The Hollywood Reporter it has done so out of deference to the growing controversy. There are no plans to change the film’s July 27 release date, however.
“We are very sensitive to the Trayvon Martin case, but our film is a broad alien-invasion comedy and bears absolutely no relation to the tragic events in Florida,” a Fox spokesperson tells THR. “The movie, which is not scheduled for release for several months, was made and these initial marketing materials were released before this incident ever came to light. The teaser materials were part of an early phase of our marketing and were never planned for long-term use. Above all else, our thoughts go out to the families touched by this terrible event.”
The Neighborhood Watch teaser poster for features the silhouette of an alien on a neighborhood watch street sign that’s riddled with bullet holes, in reference to the movie’s storyline about a group of men who try to stop an alien invasion. Directed by Akiva Schaffer, Neighborhood Watch opens July 27 and stars Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade. [THR]

To me it doesn’t seem similar enough to warrant action, though I’m sure newly-skinny Jonah Hill probably would kill for some Skittles these days (“HEEEY, try the waiters, tip your veal, whackety schmackety too soon.”). Anyway, it’s funny that it’s a Ben Stiller movie (though directed by Akiva Shaffer), considering the Stiller-directed Zoolander opened just two weeks after 9/11, which many people blame for its poor box office performance (despite being inarguably awesome). In some places, the announcement that the towers were falling even interrupted Zoolander commercials. And no one even saw his 2011 film, Nuclear Tsunami Party. The man’s cursed. The Uproxx editorial staff will be wearing Jew fro wigs (or going natural in my case) all week to show our support.

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21 Jump Street is this generation’s Starsky and Hutch! I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s true! 21 Jump Street is this generation’s answer to the slightly previous generation’s 2004 remake of the forgettable cop show from the seventies! “You young peckernecks wouldn’t know a contemporary riff on a cheesy cop show if it crawled up your iPad while you were tweetin!” We used to tell our slightly younger siblings, back in those heady days of 2009. “Back in my day, we had Owen Wilson! And Snoop Dog!” we’d shout, spilling our whiskey and throwing cats at spittoons. WELL NO LONGER! IT’S OFFICIAL! THIS GENERATION HAS TAKEN WHAT WAS OURS, THAT WE TOOK FROM OUR PARENTS, AND MADE IT THEIR OWN! AGAIN! (*runs in circle on floor like Curly, chugging energy drink*)

[I originally wrote this review for The Portland Mercury. If you could go there for the first part and then click back here to see the extendo version below, that would be great].

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"Deuce, son."

The moderately-anticipated film version of 21 Jump Street doesn’t hit theaters until March 16, but word on the street and Twitters is that people have loved the comedic take on the iconic Fox TV show, and I know this because Channing Tatum Tweets about it nonstop. They should have never taught that mack daddy daddy mack how to access Twitter on his Boost Mobile LG Marquee.

If you’re like me, you’re concerned that the new GI Joe 2: Retaliation trailer makes it seem like Tatum’s character will be killed off early in the film (opinion, not spoiler alert), but thankfully that won’t be the case when he teams up with Jonah Hill again. That’s right, 21 Jump Street is already getting a sequel!

*holds for mild applause*

“We are writing the sequel now. We got [the greenlight] by the studio to start writing the sequel,” Hill told E!.

While some might say that greenlighting a 21 Jump Streetsequel prior to the movie’s national release might be a risky maneuver, there is nothing but optimism attached to the upcoming film. Early screenings of Jump Street SXSW were met with a ton of praise. Hill himself has gone on record to proclaim Jump Street on par with Superbad as among the two funniest movies he has ever done. (Via Hollywood.com)

Despite turning in his first strictly comedic performance in The Dilemma to limited complaints, people are still questioning whether or not our boy C-Tates can deliver full-time as a comedy star, and while I don’t get to see 21 Jump Street until next week, I can already attest that he already turned in one of the most hilarious scenes in any movie this year…

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After the jump, I’ve got the trailer for Neighborhood Watch, Fox’s summer comedy starring Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, and Billy Crudup, directed by The Lonely Island’s Akiva Shaffer and written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad, Pineapple Express, Green Hornet).

Suburban dads form a neighborhood watch group to get time away from their families, only to discover a plot to destroy Earth.

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