Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
2/16/08
What
horrifying tales of production terror this movie must have to tell!
I may be alone in this, but I've often daydreamed about being able to teleport
myself around the world (and even just to work), so when I saw Jumper's
spiffy trailer, my hopes were high. Little did I suspect that the
movie's 87 minute running time would be filled out with what are presumably
(shudder) the best scenes shot during a long and torturous production that
included the replacement of both original stars, name actors reduced to
minutes or even seconds of screen time, and a plot that merely hints at
coherence. None of this might have been necessary had any of its'
stars or three credited writers been able to lick the hard truth at the
film's center: no matter how many gee-wiz effects and globe-trotting
locations we see, not one of Jumper's characters is worth giving
the slightest damn about.
Life
was tough for young David Rice (Max Thieriot): abandoned at the age
of 5 by his mother Mary (Diane Lane) and left with alcoholic father William
(Michael Rooker), he was an outcast at school, tolerated only by girl of
his dreams Millie (AnnaSophia Robb). After slipping through the ice
on a pond, he's presumed dead, but in fact has discovered the remarkable
ability to teleport himself to safety with his mind. He believes
he can use the same power to get away from his life and begins robbing
banks (jump into the vault, jump back out with the cash) to establish a
lavish, globe-trotting lifestyle. Years later (now played by Hayden
Christensen), he's settled into a routine of casual debauchery that's interrupted
by a man called Roland (Samuel L. Jackson). Roland is one of the
Paladins, a group which hunts down and kills “Jumpers” with extreme prejudice
because, well, they really don't like them and they all turn bad eventually
and only God should have their power and stuff like that. David goes
on the run and heads to the one place no one would ever think to look for
him: home, where he reconnects with an adult Millie (Rachel Bilson)
whose life has turned out so horribly that he now looks like a catch to
her. Despite the fact that he's obviously a criminal, she's happy
to join him on a trip to Rome where they check out the Colosseum and run
into both more Paladins and another Jumper, Griffin (Jamie Bell).
Unlike David, Griffin is committed to a one-man war with the Paladins,
which becomes a two-man war once they grab Millie. Let the special
effects commence.
As
I've mentioned, this story has been edited down well below the point necessary
to actually be understood on any level but the most basic “Boy has power,
Boy wants Girl, Mean Man wants to kill Boy and Girl”. But there's
a larger issue with Jumper. David's childhood was no great
shakes, but he's grown into a selfish criminal who does nothing at any
time during the film but use his amazing powers for his own self-interest.
Millie seems to have no more than polite interest in David as a teen, then
(in an utterly ridiculous sequence where a town that had believed him dead
greets him back like he's just been away at college) grabs onto him once
it's clear he's got money and looks to dump him again once she's no choice
but to acknowledge the obvious fact that it's stolen. Griffin and
Roland are True Believer maniacs. One of David's parents is a drunk
and the other is a nut. Skillfully played, some or all of these characters
might have been intriguing: David himself might have emerged as some
kind of Id-centered Anti-Hero. But the level of acting in Jumper
is strictly that of a failed TV pilot. It's hard to say how bad Christensen
really is: the role is terrible, and it's not that his line readings
are off, but the former Anakin Skywalker radiates absolutely zero star
power, which is the only thing that could have saved him. What he
does do well is pose: the man wears David's snazzy wardrobe with
the skill of an established model, and I'm kinda surprised to find no work
as a clotheshorse on his resume. Bilson too delivers the Millie she's
handed, but that's just not good enough: she adds no life or spark
to an unflattering role. Jackson could play Roland in his sleep,
and he bellows out each of his maniacal proclamations with a zeal determined
to bend his own piece of space-time and put himself in a better film.
Bell gives Griffin everything he's got, but the script yo-yos him back
and forth between friend and foe so often, and with so little cause (a
recurring dialog motif about the Marvel Team-Up comic book series
is just embarrassing), that there's just nothing to be done. Lane
barely racks up 2 minutes of screen time in a role that seems like it should
be important, but even then she's coasting well below her skills.
Rooker at least makes a convincing drunk. Palace fave Kristen Stewart
has a single line and is on-screen for no more than 20 seconds, but manages
to shoot Christensen a look that may qualify as the movie's best performance.
All
that said, it would take truly amazing action indeed to lift a story about
characters so profoundly uninteresting, and while Jumper's got a
few cool moments, only one or two actually rise to the level of excitement.
The jumping effects are impressive (particularly when characters take objects
like cars, buses and houses along with them), but director Doug Liman (continuing
his devolution from action auteur to hack) also does a lot of cheating
with shots of Bell and Christensen just sitting down and landing after
jumping (the up and down kind, not the teleporting kind) with a flourish
and trying to edit them to seem like we're seeing a “jump”. That's
a B-movie trick that doesn't mesh with the higher-rent effects and makes
the goings-on look cheaper than they are. And there's a lot of expense
to a movie that actually shot at many of the overseas locations the story
visits, including a rare chance to see the inside of the Roman Colosseum.
A fight between David and Griffin that jumps all around the world and footage
of Griffin driving a jumping car that goes everywhere from around the other
cars to the sides of buildings through Tokyo just doesn't have the kick
that they would if I had given a damn what was going on.
As
for the story itself, the footage we see, culled from three different writers'
best shot at adapting Steven Gould's mostly unrelated novel, had very little
luck laying out the rhyme or reason for either Jumpers or Paladins.
Where does either side come from? What allows people like David and
Griffin to jump? How does one (and I'm thinking of one character
in particular here) end up as a Paladin? Why show a scene where David
scoffs at the notion of using his powers to help people when the idea will
never be revisited? Did anybody notice how many innocent people (particularly
car and bus passengers and library patrons) are casually killed by the
jumping action that's supposed to be so cool? I fear the answers
to all but that last question lie in the horrifying fact that Jumper
is intended to be the first in a trilogy of movies about David and his
adventures. Why bother doing anything in what is intended to be a
first act but to simply introduce the characters and their relationships
while encouraging us to ask questions about what the hell we're seeing?
Man, I love my Star Wars movies but Jumper is further proof
that the word “Trilogy” is one of the dirtiest in the modern movie business.
I'll
give everyone concerned the benefit of the doubt and believe that Jumper
is not the movie anyone involved set out to make. It's clearly been
shaved down from a far longer version into something designed to get paying
customers in and get them out while inflicting as little pain and suffering
upon them as possible. The result is a product with goals pretty
similar to those of its' hero: jump in, grab your money and get away.
Are you ready for that sequel yet? |
