A review of Jumping, by Andrew

Diane and I went down to the local Blockbuster this week and got ourselves the Movie Jumper. I had mixed feelings about this movie for a couple of reasons:

1. Hayden Christensen. He turned Darth Vader from this to this. He could save me from a burning building and I would still think "You made Vader into a sissy boy, how dare you."
2. Rachel Bilson. I've been known to see a few movies just for the cute female lead. Only a few (unless you count all of high school, college and .... well...)
3. Movies about people with incredible powers always seem to overlook obvious issues. It's like the people with great powers are really stupid or something.

Personally if Diane would let, I'd just watch Bourne Identity over and over again, and when we got tired of that (someone can get tired of that?), we'd chill with Danny Ocean and the gang. But since Diane insists on trying new things, we sat back with a bag of smarties, a 3 pound bag of gummies (hopefully our new dentist reads this blog, and I'd like to give a shout out to Dr. Hig, who just cringed at the thought of me chewing gummi bears) and enjoyed the movie.

It really was pretty good. Not amazing, but a solid movie. It was short. Which is one reason why I thought it was good. If you don't have the plot or enough good ideas to fill 2.5+ hours...DON'T. Just let it be an hour and a half or so, and leave the useless parts out. The premise behind the movie is that Lord Wuss, er..., Hayden's character somehow has the ability to jump from place to place. He has an awful childhood: mother left when he was 5, dad is a jerk, gets picked on by a chubby and poorly dressed kid at school, he is awkward with the ladies and finally he lives in Ann Arbor (watch out for a Ute invasion!!!) which, although I have yet to visit, ranks somewhere on my scale of slightly better than Siberia (oh yeah and he's kinda dumb, or at least a poor student). He falls in the ice trying to retrieve something that the chubby kid threw on the ice. Being a poor student he doesn't realize that ice is not has hard as concrete and that the water beneath the ice is cold. He falls in and is swept away to his certain death until...wormhole (by the Tom, this is how I view you spending your days, only with a biology twist). That's a jumper. Anywhere they see, they can jump. Just need a picture or a visual. So he leaves home and jumps from place to place. Inside bank vaults (which don't have cameras, nor do they track money very well), the top of the pyramids (gee I can jump anywhere in the world, let me set up a chair and eat lunch IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT, not that I don't want to see the pyramids, I just don't think I'd eat a sandwich there), and to pick up attractive girls in British pubs. All the while, he has to avoid a group of people led my Samuel L Jackson (who was in Star Wars as well, and probably just wanted to do any movie where he could "accidentally" punch Hayden in the face for ruining Star Wars) that are out to kill Jumpers. 3 Issues in closing:

1. Doesn't Hayden realize that when he teleports in and out of places that there are cameras... lots of them?
2. He pays for everything in cash apparently...including rent and everything he buys...
3. Jumpers are caught and killed by Samuel L Jackson's group using electricity, which prevents jumpers from, well, jumping...but jumpers have been hunted since the dark ages...if I my only weakness was high voltage, and I got killed in 1454...apparently Hayden wasn't the only high school drop out of the jumpers.

Anyways. Solid Movie....ENJOY!

*NOTE*

The special features had the usual part about the making of the movie. The director, who also made one of the Bourne movies and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, made the comment: "I didn't want to make a special effects movie. If I could cast someone who could actually teleport, I would." I'm stunned by this comment. One, doesn't that go without saying? Wouldn't Spielberg have cast real dinosaurs or a real shark, if he could be sure that both were real (a great white that big and crazy, anyways) and would not eat the actors. Or wouldn't Lucas have cast a real Jedi instead of Nancy Hayden? That seems like the stupist thing ever! Let's see, I could pay this one dude a million dollars to do all the jumping scenes, or 20 million in special effects...hmmmm. Two, if there were real jumpers wouldn't that make this movie really lame? Part of what made it "cool" was it was about this amazing ability. That would be like actually having real Spidermen in the world, and making Spiderman. What's the intrigue? It would have to turn into a plot movie rather than an action/sci fi movie...lame.