Jumper

February 15th, 2008

Jumper has to be one of my most anticipated movies of 2008 so I was very excited when the wife wanted to go see it on opening night. For an hour and a half I was not too disappointed but the ending was ruined the whole movie.

Hayden Christensen plays the lead, “David Rice”, and acted about as well as he did in Star Wars. Although it almost worked well in this movie because his character was supposed to be clueless. It would have been cheeper to put some pants on a piece of lumber and give it the lead role. I went into the movie thinking this was a single movie not a new franchise of movies. Throughout the entire movie I was extremely frustrated by the lack of backstory and information given. The story is so intriguing and yet all we get to see are the exciting action/special effects scenes (which are totally cool) but I have no why they are happening. At the end of the movie you realize this is just a 2 hour teaser for the next installment.

There is a character that is used to fill us in on the backstory but he isn’t very forth coming with the information and just comes across as a cocky Brit that gets extremely annoyed if he has to share any information about the origins of the Jumpers and those trying to kill the Jumpers.

Then there is small story line about David’s (Christensen) mother that really doesn’t add anything to the movie except lead to a greater story line that can’t be addressed in this movie. I don’t have a problem with franchise movies they can be fun but they do tend to wear thin if the acting and story aren’t great. This is going to be a problem with this series (if it even makes a series). The first movie has to be great for the studios to make a second and so on. This movie could have been great but it wasn’t. Special effects are only effective if they are used to accent/enhance the actors performance. The problem here is that as cool as the special effects were, Hayden Christensen is not a good enough actor to warrant working with these special effects. They were wasted. This movie will do okay in the theater but I doubt it will do well enough for a 2nd installment.

With piss poor acting and a story that has so many loose ends it looks like a curious kitten got a hold of your favorite Christmas sweater, this franchise does not stand a chance. Which in my opinion is too bad because there is a lot of potential in the story. So, sure go see it but, maybe wait until it hits the cheap theater or as a Matinee. The special effects make it a fun theater viewing experience.

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