Shouting Grounds

**spoiler warning**

Upon seeing the first trailer for Jumper, I had high hopes…The idea of the Jumper is pretty sweet…apparently you can jump to any place you’ve seen, even if it’s only from a picture.

Upon seeing the first half hour of Jumper, I wished I had gotten high and forgotten to watch the movie. This movie is total crap. Sadly, Hayden Christensen will always be Anakin Skywalker, no matter how much better an actor he becomes. This movie is not his first step forward, and he continues to showcase his skills as a mannequin.

Right away Sam Jackson lets HayStack know that he knows what he is…a fight ensues (apparently a Jumper can’t jump when he’s been electrocuted) and HayThereGeorgieBoy escapes. Although instead of using his amazing ability to escape far FAR away to a place where he’s unknown, he goes back to his home town to confront his childhood crush and crush his childhood bully…and forgets about the fact that someone knows about his ability and knows how to fight it. Nice move, shitheel…way to reassociate yourself with someone who knows your name and acquaintances. The first thing he does is jump the bully to an obvious place for Samson to find and then wisks his lady friend off to Rome. She, having not seen him for eight years, of course agrees immediately to leaving and they fly to Italia. Now, the last time she saw him, he had fallen into a frozen river, and apparently everyone had thought he drown. But today he shows up and wants to take her to Rome, and she just goes. Nice plot hole.

In Rome, HayNow meets another Jumper, a particularly annoying Irishman who SamTown is also hunting. At this point I want to leave, but I feel like I’ve already invested this much time in the goddamn travesty. A jump-fight ensues between the two Jumpers and some nondescript bad guys in the Coliseum.

After having been on screen for about 15 minutes to this point, Rachel Bilson proves to be a complete waste of flesh. Her character has no character, no motivation…is totally worthless except as eye candy for HayNut. Out of the entire runtime of the movie, there’s about 40 seconds where you get the feeling you’re about to see their relationship mature…but you’re mistaken and something stupid happens.

SamButt and his cronies are called Paladins apparently, and they’ve ‘hunted Jumpers since medieval times’. This is ALL of the back story you get…gag.

Of course, the end passes by with some more jump-fighting. Rachel Bilson quickly accepts HayMaster’s weirdness and they are in love without a hint of anything resembling a story. Which in hindsight is a good thing since I’ve seen how this writer goes about his business, and I’m more than happy to not know anything else about these characters.

This movie would be completely unwatchable without the idea of the ‘jumping’…as it stands this movie is simply unwatchable. Spare yourself the anguish and watch something else…

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Film review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.