“There is no glue to hold you…” –XTC
The teaser tagline for Doug Liman’s new venture is “Anywhere is possible” and in this case it is the literal and metaphoric truth. The movie, which I had very high hopes for walking in the door, took a huge leap and came up very very short of its mark.
The story revolves around Hayden Christiansen’s trouble youth David Rice. He discovers, through precarious circumstances at school, that he has the ability to teleport any place that he can imagine: which we find out includes Tokyo, Paris, London, Rome, bank vaults, and Ann Arbor’s Public Library system.
The story itself is pretty flimsy. David moves, or rather leaps, from home after falling through the ice of the local river and then dodging his angry father—Classic “that-guy-actor Michael Rooker”—before a would be confrontation about tracking water through the house. He leaves without so much as a trace and we see in a montage how he kept himself occupied over the last eight years.
We are shown a scene where he robs a bank and then we are shown the villain, Samuel L. Jackson’s Roland. But this is where the flimsiness is exposed, and pretty ruthlessly. We are led to believe that the David is a hero and Roland is a villain or anti-hero. But there is never enough in the story to support the actions of the characters. We are told that David leaves IOU’s for people after he robs them, but we never seeing him paying them back. We are told that Roland is a psychotic zealot but outside of him killing one Jumper that we know nothing about we aren’t shown that he is anything more than a tenacious cop whose catch phrase seems to be that “nobody but G-d should have this power.” All of the main characters share this flat two-dimensional aspect. It is like watching a movie of caricatures rather than characters
There is a hot chick in the movie (she takes up most of the story shot in Rome) and she is the old love interest. And that is pretty much her whole role in the story; she is an excuse to show off some flashy special effects and an occasional shot of token hot girl in underwear.
The story of the movie is so flimsy that talking about anything else gives away too much and I don’t want spoil anything for the poor fools that are going to pay to see this movie.
But I am going to mention, from my point of view, the most important thing in movies. That is a continuity of suspension of disbelief. What happens in Jumper is David falls through a sheet of ice. He then disappears without saying good-bye to anybody. Fair enough, he clearly was a troubled lad; nobody liked him, who can’t appreciate that sentiment of wanting to escape at any price.
But then he goes back.
And walks into a bar where he finds out that his ex-love interest is working. They have some banter, a small fist fight ensues between him and his old high school rival, and then out of nowhere the hot chick agrees to fly to Rome with a guy who was last seen falling through a sheet of ice on a frozen river. She may have said to herself that he wasn’t dead, but I don’t think for a second that a smart girl decides on a whim to fly to Rome with someone she hasn’t seen in eight years.
Yes, I am willing to believe that people can teleport, or shoot laser beams out of their eyes, or grow to incredible proportions those are all physical things that are easy to bypass in your minds eye (they are also things that I have wanted to do for a great many years). But there is something immutable in the responses of humans to certain situations. And if you are going to throw in a plot twist as shaky as the reconnection of a troubled youth and the hot chick he adored and then have the foundation of the rest of the story be built on her willowy shoulders you need a stronger story to begin with.
It may seem like I am really down on this movie, and I think that would be a fair assessment but it wasn’t all=-bad. Jamie Bell, who was inspiring in Billy Elliot, has a great turn as an equally tenacious jumper-zealot when it comes to the destruction of the arch-enemies. Samuel L. Jackson is also good as Roland and I was really struck with the way those two really buoyed up the rest of the movie.
The effects are also worthy of mention. And I will say this: Doug Liman knows how to make action exciting. He did it with “Bourne Identity” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, two movies that kept me on the edge of seat through multiple viewings. He does the same with “Jumper” but it is just polish on a terd; although, again, it is glorious polish. There is a segment in which Bell’s Griffin jumps a London Double Decker bus into the desert. There was a lot of near-miss style diving and amazing effects but it just isn’t enough. And I think it should reiterate just how important a strong script is.
Final judgment for Jumper is this: It isn’t all-bad; there are some funny lines and a couple of performances that are worth the price of admission at a matinee or a super Tuesday discount bargain night. If you have a super high powered home theater you might just wait to see it on Blu-Ray or DVD. But please for the love of G-d don’t see this for any more than seven dollars. I have a supremely high tolerance for crap and I was hurt, spiritually, when I saw this one.
The story revolves around Hayden Christiansen’s trouble youth David Rice. He discovers, through precarious circumstances at school, that he has the ability to teleport any place that he can imagine: which we find out includes Tokyo, Paris, London, Rome, bank vaults, and Ann Arbor’s Public Library system.
The story itself is pretty flimsy. David moves, or rather leaps, from home after falling through the ice of the local river and then dodging his angry father—Classic “that-guy-actor Michael Rooker”—before a would be confrontation about tracking water through the house. He leaves without so much as a trace and we see in a montage how he kept himself occupied over the last eight years.
We are shown a scene where he robs a bank and then we are shown the villain, Samuel L. Jackson’s Roland. But this is where the flimsiness is exposed, and pretty ruthlessly. We are led to believe that the David is a hero and Roland is a villain or anti-hero. But there is never enough in the story to support the actions of the characters. We are told that David leaves IOU’s for people after he robs them, but we never seeing him paying them back. We are told that Roland is a psychotic zealot but outside of him killing one Jumper that we know nothing about we aren’t shown that he is anything more than a tenacious cop whose catch phrase seems to be that “nobody but G-d should have this power.” All of the main characters share this flat two-dimensional aspect. It is like watching a movie of caricatures rather than characters
There is a hot chick in the movie (she takes up most of the story shot in Rome) and she is the old love interest. And that is pretty much her whole role in the story; she is an excuse to show off some flashy special effects and an occasional shot of token hot girl in underwear.
The story of the movie is so flimsy that talking about anything else gives away too much and I don’t want spoil anything for the poor fools that are going to pay to see this movie.
But I am going to mention, from my point of view, the most important thing in movies. That is a continuity of suspension of disbelief. What happens in Jumper is David falls through a sheet of ice. He then disappears without saying good-bye to anybody. Fair enough, he clearly was a troubled lad; nobody liked him, who can’t appreciate that sentiment of wanting to escape at any price.
But then he goes back.
And walks into a bar where he finds out that his ex-love interest is working. They have some banter, a small fist fight ensues between him and his old high school rival, and then out of nowhere the hot chick agrees to fly to Rome with a guy who was last seen falling through a sheet of ice on a frozen river. She may have said to herself that he wasn’t dead, but I don’t think for a second that a smart girl decides on a whim to fly to Rome with someone she hasn’t seen in eight years.
Yes, I am willing to believe that people can teleport, or shoot laser beams out of their eyes, or grow to incredible proportions those are all physical things that are easy to bypass in your minds eye (they are also things that I have wanted to do for a great many years). But there is something immutable in the responses of humans to certain situations. And if you are going to throw in a plot twist as shaky as the reconnection of a troubled youth and the hot chick he adored and then have the foundation of the rest of the story be built on her willowy shoulders you need a stronger story to begin with.
It may seem like I am really down on this movie, and I think that would be a fair assessment but it wasn’t all=-bad. Jamie Bell, who was inspiring in Billy Elliot, has a great turn as an equally tenacious jumper-zealot when it comes to the destruction of the arch-enemies. Samuel L. Jackson is also good as Roland and I was really struck with the way those two really buoyed up the rest of the movie.
The effects are also worthy of mention. And I will say this: Doug Liman knows how to make action exciting. He did it with “Bourne Identity” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, two movies that kept me on the edge of seat through multiple viewings. He does the same with “Jumper” but it is just polish on a terd; although, again, it is glorious polish. There is a segment in which Bell’s Griffin jumps a London Double Decker bus into the desert. There was a lot of near-miss style diving and amazing effects but it just isn’t enough. And I think it should reiterate just how important a strong script is.
Final judgment for Jumper is this: It isn’t all-bad; there are some funny lines and a couple of performances that are worth the price of admission at a matinee or a super Tuesday discount bargain night. If you have a super high powered home theater you might just wait to see it on Blu-Ray or DVD. But please for the love of G-d don’t see this for any more than seven dollars. I have a supremely high tolerance for crap and I was hurt, spiritually, when I saw this one.
posted by V. at 3:02 PM
3 Comments:
If the stranger I hadn't seen in 8 years was good looking and had a decent story, I would undoubtedly fly to Rome with him, hope you aren't disappointed in your little sis! If things didn't turn out I would just ditch him and go shoe shopping.
I would not fly to someplace like Scranton or Idaho Falls though, so take heart.
haha Lauryn you are always thinking, and that is one of the things I really love about you. :-)
V, I appreciate and agree with your sentiment re: believability in movies. There has to be an overarching sense of human reality to make a story, no matter how fantastical, work. I don't know if this is the same phenomenon, but when I was growing up I had a similar difficulty with movies that were musicals (besides the obvious problem that they often sucked): I didn't like it when a character would sing a song by himself, and then later, the song would be reprised, but other people would suddenly know the song. It bothered me I think because I felt like the solo song was the person's private thoughts, and then just having everyone sing along broke the verisimilitude of the story, because how did anyone else just automatically know what that one person had been thinking when they were alone?
I know reality isn't the strong suit of the movies, in fact, it's sort of against the point, in many cases --- but a movie has to work within the confines of the characters. And if the characters are all human beings, they have to ACT like real human beings.
Exactly, Nicky. I have a tremendous capacity for accepting the fantastic; however, when you step out of a barber shot and sing a song I get lost.
I think it is also part of the reason I don't like horror films, same problem. Okay six of your friends have just died. You do not under any circumstances walk out someplace--the garage, the backyard, the bathroom, the bedroom for a quickie--alone or with only one other person. If people are dying you go to the police station if that isn't possible you all sit in one room and hope that when the demon-spawn-killer-of -men shows himself you have the numbers to prevail.
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