OK, well I saw Jumper. It certainly lacked pizazz. At least the failings in this movie were not Hayden Christensen’s fault. No, Annikin, er, I mean Hayden actually can act a little and does fine here. The movie, however, sucks, and it really has no reason to suck.
The basic plot is this: Hayden can teleport and he uses his power like any dysfunctional teenager would; he robs banks and uses the money to seduce hot Irish chicks. Apparently, jumpers (as those with this power are called) have been around forever and a super-secret religious cabal called the “Paladins” (spearheaded by Samuel L. Jackson) are onto their game and hunts them ruthlessly.
There seems to be a lot of back story here and the movie would be great if they spent some time exploring it, but they don’t. Instead they spend an unbelievable amount of time showing David (Christensen) moon over Millie (Rachel Bilson). Millie is moonworthy, to be sure, but this is, nominally, an action movie. So where is the action? The movie just feels like a rough draft.
In Improv comedy, one of the rules is “Never say No”. Always be willing to run with whatever the other guy gives you, or the scene just sort of stops and falls over and dies. This is what happens here, but someone actually took the time to write the script. This script has the characters constantly trying to not do anything. David gives Millie a lame explanation for his money (“I’m in banking”) and she does not question him, although she obviously does not believe him. David runs into another jumper, Griffin (Jamie Bell) who spends most of the movie trying very hard to not do anything interesting, and almost succeeds. Samuel L. Jackson look stupid in white hair dye, BTW, and we never explore the basis of his fanatical hatred of jumpers. The whole movie is a collage of “let’s not try”.
If they had tried, this would be a really good film. The teleportation effect is stunning. Each jump shatters windows and cracks the granite walls around it. In the few scenes where the characters actually DO SOMETHING, cars and buses are being flung about like Frisbees, and entire apartments get dropped into city libraries, but these scenes are few and far between, and the movie is just 90 minutes of missed opportunities.
Oh, and Diane Lane was in it, but she just kinds phoned it in.
I give it a 2.
