Cast:
- Hayden Christensen ... David Rice
- Jamie Bell ... Griffin
- Rachel Bilson ... Millie
- Diane Lane ... Mary Rice
- Samuel L. Jackson ... Roland
- Michael Rooker ... William Rice
- AnnaSophia Robb ... Young Millie
- Max Thieriot ... Young David
Directed by Doug Liman (Go, The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith). Screenplay by David S. Goyer (Blade, Dark City, Batman Begins), Jim Uhls (Fight Club), and Simon Kinberg (xXx 2, X-Men: The Last Stand). Based on the novel by Steven Gould.
An Ability Discovered
David Rice was an ordinary kid -- at least, he thought he was. Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, all he really cared about was a girl named Millie and someday getting away from his unpleasant father. Then one day he fell through the ice into a frozen lake and, instead of dying, jumped -- teleporting himself, and a bit of the lake, to the local library.
Realizing he could go anywhere and do anything, 15-year-old David left home and started making the most of his gift -- visiting the most exotic locations, riding the biggest waves, even robbing a few banks because he could. For eight years he lived a perfect life, until the jumper-hunters, known as Paladins, caught up with him in his New York luxury apartment, led by the sinister Roland.
Not realizing the extent of his plight David fled back home and, reconnecting with his childhood sweetheart Millie, convinced her to travel to Rome with him. But the Paladins find him in the Coliseum, along with another jumper, a gruff rebel named Griffin. When they elude their pursuers the Paladins target Millie, forcing David, who thought he was alone, to seek an alliance with Griffin to try to defeat Roland once and for all.
Not Just a Travesty
A movie should be based on its own merits, so I'm going to leave aside for the purposes of this review the crimes that the film Jumper perpetrates against the innocent and defenseless book of the same name (Jumper, not to be confused with the recent Jumper: Griffin's Story). Fans of the book will get an idea from the plot recap above the extent to which the film deviates from, or more accurately hurls aside in contempt, its source material. In fact the only thing that the film has in common with the book is that both concern a guy named David Rice who can teleport. Everything else in the film is clearly the result of wouldn't-it-be-cool brainstorming sessions and cold-hearted calculations of what mutilations would be necessary for this story to be converted into a slick three-film blockbuster franchise.
So let's start instead with the most surprising element of the film, which is that Hayden Christensen isn't the worst thing in it. Don't get me wrong -- he's pretty bad, as bad as he was in Star Wars: Episode III. But the screenplay, plotting, music, characterizations, casting, and supporting performances are so much worse.
The opening scenes artlessly show David discovering his gift, which he reacts to with all the amazement and wonder of someone discovering he can bend his index finger backward. Running away for no obvious reason (his father's abuse is only obscurely hinted at), David decides to become a jerk and becomes very successful at it. All of this is handled in the film exactly as if it were obligatory backstory being dispensed with on the way to the action.
Lame Writing, Badly Performed
For an example of how bad the dialog is, consider this late exchange: "So you're a Paladin. And I'm a Jumper." "Yes." "What now?" "I'm giving you a head start -- because I love you." Or consider this. The worst scene in Episode III the one where Anakin, played by Hayden Christensen, proclaims his love for Padmé with all the fervor of a man ordering a ham sandwich. The scene is a sinkhole of bad acting, writing, and direction, baldly telling us his love without selling it, without making us believe a word of it. I had to rub my eyes in disbelief when the same scene cropped up in Jumper: David, promising to leave Millie alone after exposing her to danger, adds, "But it's always been you. Since we were five." Christensen delivers these awful lines (did David Goyer really have anything to do with this script?) not only as if he didn't know if they were true, but as if he didn't know what they meant.
Millie, meanwhile, is a character devised solely to be the endangered girlfriend. She has no ambition or insight, signified by her having remained in their hometown and ended up as a barmaid, a profession action movies identify with willing subservience. Once she gets pulled into the action she becomes both extraneous and annoying, her dialog frequently devolving into bouts of keening "David? David?? What's going on??" It got to the point where I knew my head would explode if she said "David??" one more time. And then she did, and my head did explode. This review is in fact being written by a headless carcass. An angry headless carcass.
Jumper II
Rachel Bilson, who was Summer on The O.C., outdoes Christensen in making a badly drawn character worse with bad acting. Jamie Bell at least gets some funny lines to lift his lively but largely one-note characterization as Griffin, the other jumper, but poor Samuel L. Jackson once again has to struggle against an uncreated character. Roland is supposed to be part of a centuries-old order of religious fanatics, but none of that comes through in his words or actions: he mouths the Paladin party line ("Only God should have this power"), but there's no indication of what's driving Roland himself -- what motivated him to join what's essentially a medieval cult in the first place, why he personally feels compelled to kill jumpers, nothing but words. The Opus Dei assassins in The Da Vinci Code were better defined than this.
Massive sums were lavished on the special effects, which are pretty cool, and location shooting, which can only do so much. The fight scenes are well choreographed but sometimes hard to follow, and occasionally inspire a bad laugh when the two jumpers are chasing each other. The shots of David and Griffin walking around Tokyo or New York look great, but they're still shots of David and Griffin walking; and the first-ever extended filming inside the real Coliseum could have been at Nathan's in Coney Island: these characters have the barest appreciation of where they are, so why go to the trouble of filming there?
Jumper is disgraceful waste: of a great book, of talented actors like Bell and Jackson, and of the time of everyone who worked on it or sat through it.
