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Jumper [Review}
Feb. 19th, 2008 09:37 amJumper, like Free Willy before it, is a film whose title doesn't cross the Atlantic to the UK well. A lot of the marketing campaign for the film has featured posters on the London Underground with a dramatic shot of someone standing on top of a famous landmark with the caption "If you were a Jumper you wouldn't need the train", to which I always thought Of course not, I'd be in the tumble dryer.
Jumper marks another inexplicable notch in the acting bedpost of Hayden Christensen, or Balsa Boy as he is known to movie afficionadoes. Displaying the emotional and acting range for which he became justifiably famous in the Star Wars prequels, Christensen switches from irritating and smug to mildly constipated and back again perhaps two or three times during the course of the film.
Christensen is cast as (I was going to say 'plays', but that's too polite a word for what he does) David Rice, a young man who one day accidentally discovers he has the ability to teleport - or 'Jump' - to anywhere he has a 'strong impression' of. Rice promptly fakes his own death, robs a few banks, has lunch on top of the Sphinx, and stalks his ex (because as we all know from Superman Returns, when you have superpowers you hang round your ex girlfriend and use them to spy on her in her underwear). This is what passes as 'high concept' in Hollywood - someone discovering they have a superpower and using it for personal gain rather than good. If this weren't the background of every supervillain ever, I suppose I might be impressed. At no point does David ever do anything interesting, amusing or quirky with his power like visit all the places that the Wombles were named after like I would. He just nicks stuff and picks up girls.
Evrntually, Hayden runs up against Samuel L Jackson in a fright wig, which in acting terms is like walloping a pumpkin with a sledgehammer. Jackson plays Roland, a 'Paladin'. The Paladins are a bunch of 'religous zealots' who see it as their role to hunt down and kill Jumpers, which must make them unpopular in Marks & Spencer. The Paladins are apparently the same organisation which ran the mediaeval Inquisition, so I suppose that's why Galileo Galilei was burned for teleporting to the moon to prove the earth moved.
Actually, I jest. The Paladins have no discernable reason for wanting to kill Jumpers except to advance the plot, but 'religious zealot' is Hollywood scriptwriter shorthand for 'no reason for their actions at all', because a philosophical system that has had several thousand years of thought by some of the cleverest people ever to live doesn't need to have any internal consistency or sense behind it, mm'kay?
What ensues is a spectaclar amount of money spent in the Special Effects shop, with no actual thought behind it into things like 'how', 'why', and 'what would a real person do in this situation'.
Jumper is by no means the worst film I've seen. It's just not a very good one. If they'd cast someone who can actually act in the lead (I'm a big fan of James Franco after he was the only thing worth watching in Spiderman 3) this might have been a vaguely watchable if instantly forgettable piece of brainless entertainment. Unfortunately, casting a lead actor who abilities would be better served by him being carved into toy boats for children really scuppers any chance this film ever had of working.
Jumper marks another inexplicable notch in the acting bedpost of Hayden Christensen, or Balsa Boy as he is known to movie afficionadoes. Displaying the emotional and acting range for which he became justifiably famous in the Star Wars prequels, Christensen switches from irritating and smug to mildly constipated and back again perhaps two or three times during the course of the film.
Christensen is cast as (I was going to say 'plays', but that's too polite a word for what he does) David Rice, a young man who one day accidentally discovers he has the ability to teleport - or 'Jump' - to anywhere he has a 'strong impression' of. Rice promptly fakes his own death, robs a few banks, has lunch on top of the Sphinx, and stalks his ex (because as we all know from Superman Returns, when you have superpowers you hang round your ex girlfriend and use them to spy on her in her underwear). This is what passes as 'high concept' in Hollywood - someone discovering they have a superpower and using it for personal gain rather than good. If this weren't the background of every supervillain ever, I suppose I might be impressed. At no point does David ever do anything interesting, amusing or quirky with his power like visit all the places that the Wombles were named after like I would. He just nicks stuff and picks up girls.
Evrntually, Hayden runs up against Samuel L Jackson in a fright wig, which in acting terms is like walloping a pumpkin with a sledgehammer. Jackson plays Roland, a 'Paladin'. The Paladins are a bunch of 'religous zealots' who see it as their role to hunt down and kill Jumpers, which must make them unpopular in Marks & Spencer. The Paladins are apparently the same organisation which ran the mediaeval Inquisition, so I suppose that's why Galileo Galilei was burned for teleporting to the moon to prove the earth moved.
Actually, I jest. The Paladins have no discernable reason for wanting to kill Jumpers except to advance the plot, but 'religious zealot' is Hollywood scriptwriter shorthand for 'no reason for their actions at all', because a philosophical system that has had several thousand years of thought by some of the cleverest people ever to live doesn't need to have any internal consistency or sense behind it, mm'kay?
What ensues is a spectaclar amount of money spent in the Special Effects shop, with no actual thought behind it into things like 'how', 'why', and 'what would a real person do in this situation'.
Jumper is by no means the worst film I've seen. It's just not a very good one. If they'd cast someone who can actually act in the lead (I'm a big fan of James Franco after he was the only thing worth watching in Spiderman 3) this might have been a vaguely watchable if instantly forgettable piece of brainless entertainment. Unfortunately, casting a lead actor who abilities would be better served by him being carved into toy boats for children really scuppers any chance this film ever had of working.
