Jumper

Jumper and I were destined to be. A few months back, when I took over this space, the first movie I reviewed was the latest Harry Potter film, and before it was a trailer for Jumper. The same trailer prefaced pretty much every movie I’d seen since. It looked frighteningly terrible. I had no desire to see it. Buried deep down in my nerdy soul is the belief that Samuel L. Jackson and Hayden Christensen are partly responsible for tarnishing the Star Wars saga’s good name. But—and Yoda would probably back me up on this—you can’t fight fate, and thanks to new movies being bumped up to Thursday during Valentine’s Day weekend, when it came to choose this week’s film to review, I had no other choice than Jumper. Like a young Jedi venturing into the swamps of Dagobah, I soldiered forth to face my fears—and what I found was awful.

    This fittingly choppy tale follows David Rice (Christensen, with help from Max Theriot, who plays the teenaged version of the character), a young man with a very useful talent. A typical run in with a high school bully escalates into a near-death experience that triggers Rice’s long-dormant power of teleportation. He uses his newly discovered ability to leave his depressing home life in Ann Arbor, MI (apparently his father kinda sucks, but you’ll just have to take Rice’s word on that one); move to New York City; rob banks; and basically just become a giant douchebag. He surfs in Fiji, enjoys a sandwich on top of the Sphinx, teleports into a British girl’s pants and is home before bedtime. But for all his jet setting and horsing around, Rice still pines for the girl he left behind, Millie (Rachel Bilson and AnnaSophia Robb as the younger version).



    However, all this jumping about has its “consequences” and those come in the form of Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) and his handful of faceless cronies. Rice soon finds himself in the middle of a war that’s been raging for quite some time between jumpers and Roland’s supposedly ultra-religious group, called Paladins. Why? Good question. Fellow jumper Griffin (Jamie Bell) later explains that he doesn’t know either, but he says that Paladins have been killing jumpers since “medieval times.”

    I enjoy movies with a little mystery. I usually don’t like films that have too much explication, but Jumper never even gives you enough information to go on. At just 88 minutes in length, the film isn’t concerned with the whys or hows, but instead plunges right in. This strategy could make for an exciting experience, but Jumper has little in the way of thrills. The fight choreography is stiff, and though the teleportation sequences are plentiful and seamless, they’re not exactly eye-catching. Instead, Jumper is riddled with scenes of small talk and pointless sequences in which the Rice and Griffin show off their powers. In a scene before the final confrontation with the Paladins, Rice follows Griffin to Japan where they walk around for a bit, steal a car, blink in and out of traffic, have a brief chat and then poof over to the next location.

    Following suit, Jumper closes with a really open ending, leaving plenty of room for a sequel. Fate, as it turns out, has a pretty twisted sense of humor.

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