Comedy sequels are incredibly difficult to pull off.  For every Back to the Future Part II, there are a hundred Caddyshack II’s.  It’s almost impossible to recapture the lightning in a bottle that made Airplane! or Ghostbusters so fantastic, but if anyone can pull off a successful comedy follow-up, it’s directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller.  They’ve made a habit of wildly surpassing expectations, and early reviews for their 21 Jump Street sequel 22 Jump Street are incredibly positive, praising the film’s self-referential nature, emotional backbone, and a standout end credits sequence sequences in addition to another pair of solid performances by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.  Though the film is still over a week from release, we’ve rounded up a few of the reviews and reactions to give you an overview of the response thus far.

Hit the jump to take a look.  22 Jump Street opens in theaters on June 13th. 

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Image via Sony Pictures

In his review for Variety, Scott Foundas praised the film’s self-awareness with regards to sequels:

“Much as 21 Jump Street managed to simultaneously tip its hat and thumb its nose at its 1980s fourth-network source material, so 22 Jump Street wears its sequel-ness on its sleeve… A movie this self-aware might easily drown in its own ironic detachment, but as they did so deftly in both 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie, Lord and Miller balance their smartypants meta-humor with go-for-broke pratfalls and a certain fundamental sincerity that keeps the characters relatable without ever veering into straight-faced emotionalism.”

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Image via Sony Pictures

Over at The Playlist, Oliver Lyttelton discussed Lord and Miller’s decision to build upon the formula set up in the first film and praised the action sequences:

“By sticking to the template, Lord, Miller and the writers can focus on perfecting the formula, mostly by making it, if anything, even funnier. This time out, the film positively dense with jokes, almost all of which are good. Unlike many studio comedies, arguably including the original, it doesn't need to stop being funny in order to tell a story, and almost every scene has been wrung out for gags to some degree or another. The film is bigger in most ways, and the action and filmmaking seems more consciously indebted to Michael Bay—and Bad Boys in particular—right down to the homoerotic relationship between the two leads.”

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Image via Sony Pictures

John DeFore echoed the praise for the action in his review for THR:

“The most reliable humor here comes from the film's 30 Rock-like way of drawing attention to the showbiz cliches it's indulging in, but Ice Cube wasn't joking about the production value: In addition to meta gags, we do get big stunty chases and the like, especially when the action moves south for spring break. The finale is totally ridiculous but fun, finally allowing these two mismatched buddies to form one perfect unit of cop-flick cool.”

And for even more reactions, we’ve rounded up some tweets from after last night’s screening as well: