Jumper

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

When I was ten, my reading list included a steady flow of Animorphs books and Return of the Jedi was my favorite Star Wars movie. I would eat up anything the least bit science fictiony, and if I had seen Jumper in those impressionable times, I have a feeling I would’ve loved it.

Unfortunately, I now have a bit of discretion, and I know that Jumper is not actually a good movie. There’s plenty of superficial globe-hopping fun, but the structure is off, the rules of the world are vague, the character arcs are almost pathetically clunky. (Lest you think I’ve lost my sense of fun, Return of the Jedi is still my favorite Star Wars movie. Ewok haters can screw off.)

Hayden Christensen stars as David, who tells us in a goofy opening narration that he’s “on top of the world.” An unnecessarily long prologue set in high school tells us how his mom (Diane Lane, what are you doing here?) left when he was a little kid, his dad (Michael Rooker) is borderline-abusive, and when he accidentally falls through a patch of ice and somehow teleports to the floor of the town library, he realizes he has superhuman powers. He disappears from home, much to the sadness of his true love Millie (played briefly by AnnaSophia Robb and grown up as Rachel Bilson) and starts making a living by “Jumping” in and out of bank vaults.

To the movie’s credit, it doesn’t use this concept to become a standard-issue superhero movie, but the way it avoids that is to make it explicitly clear that David is a selfish jackass. When, now in his twenties and living in a New York City penthouse bought from all stolen cash, he flips on the television to see flood footage of people drowning to death and others trapped on their roofs – people he could easily help with barely any effort – he changes the channel and watches Family Guy instead. (Ugh – thanks to 20th Century Fox corporate synergy, there are at least two instances of Family Guy footage.)

Soon, of course, the plot thickens as David realizes that he’s not the only Jumper, that in fact there’s been a secret war waged for centuries between the Jumpers and the Paladins, a group of bad guys (fronted by a white-haired Samuel L. Jackson) who think Jumpers should be killed because “only God should have the power to be in two places at once.” David must team up with fellow Jumper Griffin (Jamie Bell, by far the best of the cast because he’s obviously having a lot of fun), because of course the Paladins have soon targeted Millie.

The movie has giant plausibility problems. I don’t have a problem with the script loading up on Jumpers and Paladins and Centuries-Long Secret Wars and what have you, but it doesn’t sufficiently sell its mythology. The Paladins have vague motivations at best, the rules ...