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Don't Jump at Jumper

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

2 Comments
So Jumper is the same old story: boy meets girl, boy gets picked on by bully, boy almost dies and discovers that he has the ability to teleport... Ok, so it's not "the same old story" but maybe it would be better if it was. When you go to see a movie that involves teleporting or heat vision or snakes on a plane you lend belief to the reality created by the movie. This only works if the movie actually maintains reality within the movie. Jumper really fails this test.

Also, the idea of people being able to teleport and a holy war being waged against them, is a great idea. The idea was set to make something great. However, Jumper is a great idea that leads to a movie that's tacked together with ridiculous and unnecessary action sequences rather than... plot.

One problem with the movie is that no one knows about "jumpers" and yet if the two main jumpers in the movie had been left to their own devices every person in the world would have personally seen one of the two of them "jump" within about 3 weeks time. With no one knowing about jumpers, 3these two are rather cavalier with their abilities, even Griffin who knows that "Paladins" are hunting jumpers to kill them.

And what movie would be complete without a tacked on love interest? I'm not sure if it was bad acting, bad writing, bad directing or if Hayden Christensen is dead inside but instead of love what comes across is obsession and creepiness. Also, how dumb is the girl that runs into someone she thought has been dead for 8 years and then immediately jumps a plane to Europe with him? It just doesn't make sense. It would have worked fine if there was actually chemistry between Christensen and Rachel Bilson but there wasn't!

Lastly, the Paladins, Samuel L Jackson leads a underground conspiracy of religious warriors hunting "abominations before god." This secret society is outfitted with high tech weapons to fight people that can teleport... actually they have a cattle prod combined with a taser. Yeah... That's really it, oh wait also Samuel L. Jackson carries a machete for gutting caught jumpers.

If the jumpers had used a little tact with their abilities, if the love interest was interesting and if the "holy war" involved more than ONE jumper (two when Christensen joins "Griffin") if any part of the movie made sense, this would have been a decent movie. But it didn't and it isn't. If you have the chance, jump to a different theater.

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  1. Posted by: on Feb 22, 2008 @ 7:34pm

    definitely convinced not to go see this one... I had been anticipating it, but naturally can't go if it gets such a bad review!

    thanks!

  2. Posted by: Zach on Feb 23, 2008 @ 11:33am

    ditto on all of that, the movie sucked but i couldn't pinpoint exactly why. In previews it seemed to have all the making of a great flck: cool premise, good FX, Sammy L... but it left me most disappointed. You're better off to stream this one off the net.

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