'Jumper' Movie Review

America’s litigious society has now made it so that you can’t get coffee from a fast food chain without drinking it out of a cup warning you its contents may be hot. Everything has some sort of warning label attached, most of which we ignore. But I’m telling you right now, tickets to Jumper should include strongly worded language warning the buyer that headaches, outbreaks of uncontrollable laughter, and even an urge to do great bodily harm to those associated with the making of the film may occur upon viewing Jumper.

Exiting the theater a fellow critic complained there were more holes in that plot than in any movie she’d seen in quite a while, to which I responded, “What plot? This thing had a plot?” Jumper’s simply an excuse to use really cool technology to make characters bounce around the world visiting exotic locales for no particular reason other than the fact they look incredible onscreen. That’s it. If you try analyzing whatever story exists, you’ll find yourself taking a nasty trip down the rabbit hole into a mind-numbingly dull land filled with Samuel L Jackson clones zapping anything that moves with some sort of twisted version of a cattle prod. That analogy makes sense if you see the movie, which I’m definitely not suggesting you do.

The Story

David (Hayden Christensen) endures high school life as the kid who gets picked on by pretty much everyone. But as bad as life is during school hours, David’s home life is a whole lot worse. Mom left when he was just a young whippersnapper of 5 and dad’s got anger management issues along with a hefty drinking problem. At 15, David’s only hope of escaping his problems is by teleporting to different cities. Okay, that’s not quite what he dreams of when he’s wishing for a way out, but as luck would have it, David can actually transport himself to anywhere on the planet.

This teleportation talent shows up out of nowhere, but David doesn’t seem shocked or surprised to find he’s able to go wherever he wants. He just seems to accept the fact that now he can teleport. One of the first things he does after packing his gear and hitting the road is rob a bank (but he leaves IOUs and he comes from a dysfunctional family so we can’t hold his bad deeds against him). Set financially, he can now use his powers for good to help people in need across the universe. Or that’s what he should be doing. But no, not our David. All he does is spend his days eating lunch on top of the Sphinx or finding killer waves to surf or meeting hot chicks in foreign bars (or maybe it’s foreign chicks in hot bars…).

Since he’s able to take cash, clothing, and anything else he needs on his jumps, there’s not much of a challenge in bouncing around from country to country. And you’d think after 10 years of being the world’s biggest freeloading narcissist David would grow up a little or he’d get tired of being all alone. You’d be wrong. It’s not until he’s discovered by jumper hunters (referred to in the film as Paladins even though jumper hunters sounds much more intriguing) that he figures out he needs a special woman. That’s right, once he’s in danger he decides it’s time to reconnect with the girl who he had a crush on as a kid. And although it’s been 10 years since she last saw him, and everyone thinks he’s dead, she immediately packs up and takes off on a Roman holiday with this guy who could be a serial killer or an insurance salesman.

The leader of the Paladins is a real nutjob named Roland (Samuel L Jackson with weird white hair). Roland doesn’t like jumpers because he believes only God has the power to teleport. Armed with a gadget that ensnares jumpers in wire and zaps them with electricity so they can’t move, Roland and his Paladin pack hunt down jumpers while posing as members of different law enforcement agencies.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch or in Egypt or Rome or London or wherever, David finds out he’s not all that special. He meets Griffin (Jamie Bell), a much more seasoned traveler whose only goal in life is to kill Paladins in general and Roland in particular. After deciding to team up like comic book superheroes sometimes do when publishers are trying to sell more copies, David and Griffin spend the rest of the movie alternately seeking out and running away from Roland. And, of course, David’s girlfriend gets in the way because that’s what women do in this type of movie.

The Cast

Can we just cut to the chase here? Hayden Christensen has all but killed his career with his performance in Jumper. Did the multitude of screenwriters adjust the script to simple sentences after Christensen was attached? If so, they didn’t do him any favors. His character strings together about 10 words in his lengthiest sentence and so it’s up to his facial expressions and body language to do most of the work. Unfortunately, Christensen is unable to tell the story when he's limited to using just those tools.

Samuel L Jackson is playing a purely one-note character, Rachel Bilson as the requisite damsel in distress is eye candy and nothing else, and poor Jamie Bell is left to be the sole character who shows some emotion. Bell’s actually kind of fun to watch; it’s too bad he didn’t enter the picture sooner - or in place of Christensen. As the one who fights the good fight for jumpers worldwide, Bell’s Griffin is truly the only character in the movie with a little meat on his bones. Diane Lane makes a cameo appearance as…I won’t spoil it for you, but suffice it to say the part’s hardly worthy of having her name so prominently displayed in the credits.

Continued on Page 2: The Bottom Line