So today I sat down and watched Doug Liman's Jumper, and I have some shit to say. I have upwards of 6 pages of notes on this mess of a movie so this should be good.
Let's begin with a brief summary. David Rice is a shy, meager teen with a crush on his childhood friend, Millie Harris. One day, after walking out onto thin ice to retrieve a snow globe for Millie, David nearly drowns and discovers he has the ability to teleport at will to any location he desires. Little does he know that Roland, portrayed adequately by the esteemed Samuel L Jackson, and his team of religious fanatics known as the "Paladins" (a cult-y group of Templar-esque agents) is bent on ridding the world of these teleporters, referred to as Jumpers.
In a lot of ways this movie reminded of the 2009 film Push, starring Chris Evans. Or rather Push reminds me of Jumper because Jumper came out in 2008. The point is the two films share a number of similarities, and I felt similarly intrigued by the premises both films set up in their opening moments. Both films also turned out to be pretty fucking horrid. I remember Push being slightly better, but I'd have to give it another watch to decide that, and I might just do that soon.
Let's knock the positives out of the way first, because those are simplest and especially easy to notice considering they are laid against this shit brown backdrop of a motion picture. As I said earlier, the premise is interesting enough, although that is probably owed to Steven Gould, the author of the book on which the film is based. Additionally, the locations are varied and interesting visually, and the special effects aren't always terrible. The performances of Michael Rooker and Jamie Bell are easily highlights and deserve to be singled out for praise. In other words, I commend them for trying even when their scene partners didn't. Some of the action set pieces are well conceived, and one fight in particular near the end of the film featuring Jamie Bell's Griffin character and Sam Jackson's Roland is rather entertaining and at times suspenseful.
Ok, now for the fun part.
This movie is horse shit for a number of reasons, and I'd be more than happy to list them here. Let's start with bigger stuff, plot details, effects, acting, things that are painfully obvious upon a first viewing. I'll address my nitpicks afterwards.
First thing is first, Hayden Christensen, Samuel L Jackson, and Diane Lane are completely phoning it in. And I mean COMPLETELY. As if his character's villainous motivations weren't underdeveloped enough already, Jackson has no conviction in his delivery, you don't feel at any point like this is a man devoted to a cause no matter how evil that cause may seem. The best villains are the ones that force you, the viewer, to concede on certain subjects of morality. The villains that make you question right and wrong, the villains who "have a point". Think Darth Vader, Wilson Fisk, Loki, Bane, The Joker, all villainous in their own rights, but each of those bad guys has some dimension to their character that urges the audience to see them as being real people, and for that reason, we find ourselves considering their points of view and in some cases agreeing with some or most of what they have to say. Roland is not one of those characters.
Rachel Bilson as Millie Harris, the love interest. I identify her as such because she serves no other purpose in the story. She is weak, impressionable and above all, really really stupid. Granted, most of the people that populate this Jumper universe are pretty fucking dumb, but she's getting singled out here because she's a main character with a name and therefore easier to criticize.
Consider this, if you will: David Rice falls through the ice in the beginning of the film and teleports away before he can be saved. He escapes his hometown without explaining his disappearance to anyone, leaving the residents of the town to presume that he's dead. Eight years later, David returns to his hometown, finds Millie (who reacts only as though she is seeing an old classmate after a few years) and promptly agrees to go to Rome with David after he tells her how rich he is. 10 hours later the two are in Rome banging away, AS THOUGH THIS WOMAN DIDN'T BELIEVE FOR EIGHT YEARS THAT SHE HAD WITNESSED HER CHILDHOOD FRIEND DROWN WHILE HE WAS TRYING TO GET HER A SNOW GLOBE. Think about that shit. We know David has been presumed dead for all those years because when he shows up at Millie's mom's house, her mother expresses very obvious shock at the realization that David is fucking alive. Yet, somehow, her daughter didn't seem to get the memo.
Also I think it's worth mentioning that Annasophia Robb's performance as the young Millie and Rachel Bilson's performance as the adult Millie are entirely different characters. In that eight years, somehow, the character of Millie changes demeanor, changes her outlook, loses any sense of independence or wit, and changes faces because Robb and Bilson don't even kind of look alike.
The rules of the Jumping mechanic are inconsistent, and/or explained so poorly I simply couldn't tell if they were changing every five seconds on purpose. Do you need pictures in order to teleport OR can you just use a mental image of the location? And how does the ability to picture the location inform your knowledge of where it is geographically? Also why are Paldins a threat at all, considering the fact that no Jumper technically HAS to fight them? As a Jumper, your superpower is literally the ability to ESCAPE SHIT. If you are ambushed by Paladins, or better yet, if a random sketchy dude with white hair and a turtle neck is waiting in your apartment for you when you get home, just jump the fuck away first and ask questions later. Sure, maybe David never considered that there existed people in the world capable of hurting him, and therefore did not expect Roland to attack, but I find it highly unlikely that a Jumper of above average intelligence would carry on a conversation with a dude as sketchy as Roland, especially considering that he has admitted he isn't a cop AND that he knows about your ability to jump, which are both things Roland says before making any attempt to attack David in that scene.
The special effects are all over the goddamn map. One second, actors are standing in a real location or on a real set, and the next minute, they are inexplicably in front of a horribly obvious green screen. THIS SHIT CHANGES BETWEEN TAKES, TOO. In the same scene, actors will go from talking in the ruins of a Roman coliseum, to talking on a sound stage in the middle of WhoFuckingKnowsAScotia. I get that this is more than likely due to re-shoots, but for me personally, that's never been an excuse for inconsistent effects and choppy editing.
Ok, here are some brief nitpicks, and to be honest, these aren't even reaches, these are pretty legitimate gripes.
David jumps constantly in plain view of civilians. As a teenager in the film's first few scenes, he actually practices using the skill in a public park. That, to me, is just plain negligent, especially for a character who has expressed a desire to keep his jumping secret considering it could link him to SEVERAL bank heists he has pulled off using the trick. If people had any sort of evidence that a human person was teleporting (which they should, considering the places this guys decides to jump) that shit would be all over every news outlet around. People would lose their goddamn minds.
And that brings me to my next nitpick. In the film's first moments, we a re introduced to a teenage David; a quiet, shy, sensitive kid with issues regarding his father and a crush on a girl he's known since he was a kid. This same teenager, only a few days after running away from home, starts using his jumping ability (which he mastered in a strangely short amount of time) to rob banks and shit. Now up to this point we were given no indication that David may be capable of doing such a thing, but here he is, A DAY OR TWO after leaving home, and he is stealing millions in cash from banks all over New York City. Not only that, but as he grows older he extends his thievery to all sorts of items, and acquires enough in liquid assets to somehow secure a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, without raising any suspicion. Forget the fact that anyone that young paying for such an apartment with cash would immediately be suspected of doing something shady as fuck, and set aside the gaping hole in this film's plot that is this young man's mastery of economics and fraud without even completing his high school education, let's just look at the probability of a kid like David resorting to such exorbitant robbery so soon. Sure, he desperately needs money at that point in the story, and sure, we would all be tempted to start stealing shit were we to have these powers, but to steal MILLIONS? That's a crime, like a big one, and I have to believe that David understood that, and would probably have started a little smaller before perhaps escalating his operations to the bank robbing level of thievery.
Another David nitpick. Early in the film, and adult David turns on the news and sees a story about victims of a terrible tropical storm that cannot be rescued due to the immense challenge reaching them would pose. David watches this news story, scoffs, then goes off gallivanting around the world, ending his excursion on a surfing trip to Fiji where he, get this, SURFS ON WAVES CAUSED BY THE TROPICAL STORM. Look, if David is being set up to be the carefree Tony Stark type that eventually learns the importance of accountability and decides to use his powers for good, that's cool. But there is a fine line between carefree and sociopath. Like holy shit, what a weirdly heartless thing for your main character to do. Not to mention nothing happens over the course of the story to convince him to actually change and be more heroic, aside from his girlfriend of ten hours telling him that she's kind of creeped out by him and wants to be left alone. Only then, only when this girl he honestly doesn't know that well rejects him does he realize he should take responsibility to protect her from the Paladin threat.
Yeah Millie does some stupid shit. Not only does she go to Rome with David, a boy she assumed was dead for eight years, within twenty minutes of seeing him fro the first time in those eight years, but she also goes along with him when he decides to access the Roman coliseum illegally. Yeah he breaks in and she's totally cool with it, and even joins him. She also refuses to leave his side when he is arrested for that very same act, and gets arrested herself. She only agrees to go home when David pulls that "We can't be together" superhero bullshit. Goddamn it this movie is bad.
Kristen Stewart is in this movie for like thirty seconds at the very end and if I'm being honest, she was a welcome surprise. She wasn't good or anything, I was just so surprised to see her I fucking cackled and it was the most enjoyment the film actually delivered.
I don't know, man. It's bad. Sort of in a good way though. You can throw it on and roast it with friends, or alone like me, and it's good for that purpose.
I know what you're thinking.
"Malama, this movie is now seven years old. Nobody gives a fuck anymore. Anyone that wanted to see this movie already has. Why review it?"
Well I'll tell you why.
I was bored, and it was there.
And that is honestly the best way I can describe this fucking pablum.
Thanks for reading.
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