As 22 Jump Street was wrapping up, I felt like the film had made good on the high praise that’s been heaped on it. The laughs flowed freely throughout, and it’s an action-comedy that actually knows how to shoot its action as more than a joke. Still, apprehension remained: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller had done the impossible by making lightning strike in the unlikeliest of bottles twice. In the wake of the grossly disappointing Anchorman 2, this was a minor miracle, but worry remained: a sequel riffing on the fact that it’s a sequel automatically becomes less funny when its success means there will probably be another entry to come.

Then the closing credits happened, inspiring some of the biggest laughs of the entire film, and assuaging my fears. Turns out, yes, Lord and Miller are even more self-aware than the meta-tastic 22 Jump Street lets on, and clearly, they know they’ve wrung this property out for all it’s worth. It’s hard to imagine Sony and MGM not wanting to team Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill up again, given how profitable the Jump Street franchise has been, but the creative duo responsible for its success behind the camera drops the mic and cuts the power by the time 22 Jump Street is all said and done.

More power to ‘em. 22 Jump Street is lively, inventive, and very often hilarious, but its bag of tricks runs dangerously close to empty. As the film frequently points out, this is largely a retread of 21 Jump Street, with the same relationships and beats either repeated, reversed, or given a fresh coat of paint. The omnipresent, slightly cynical self-aware streak of the whole operation is what elevates the material when the original formula makes itself too noticeable, but that’s a well you can only go to once. For as smart as Lord and Miller (and the writers responsible for the original script) are when it comes to knowing how and when to eat their own tail, it’s ultimately a gimmick. But they know that, which is why, for as satisfying (though maybe just a little less so than the first time) as 22 Jump Street may be, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LET’S NOT TEMPT FATE BY DOING ANOTHER ONE.