random thoughts about random things

The odd child out in school, with a not-so-secret crush on a girl there, discovers he can teleport by accident. As his mother left him and his father when he was 5, and his father’s apparently a pathetic slob, he decides that there’s no point in hanging around at home when there’s a whole world out there for the taking. He robs a bank, and seems to be well off, something that’s underscored by the time-jump (jumper, time-jump, get it?) where we see him again as a rich kid in a fancy apartment somewhere in New York, one stuffed with big toys and a million pictures on the walls.

Soon thereafter we see him jump around the world, the Sphinx, London and so forth until he’s found by the paladins, ultimately drawn into a centuries old war between paladins and jumpers, with the ultimate stakes.

As for this movie I need to start out with a simple, but oh so true statement, just so we can get it over with, and I really need to say it again: JUMPER OWNS!

It owns in every single way you can have a movie own, except that it’s lacking an epic story à la Lord of the Rings, and any deep and gut-wrenching acting à la Debbie Does Dallas. I mean own in a very literal sense. We’re talking K.O. on a crap-ton of movies here, the movie was that fun.

Sure, Jumper’s got so much cheese it could look like an Uwe Boll movie, if it was made by Uwe Boll. There’s a million clichès in it, we’ve seen it all before, and we hate it so bitterly. Oh so bitterly hating it. The childhood crush, the school’s asshole, the lunatic enemy with a religious inclination, the alienating of a girlfriend, lies. Well, it’s all there. It’s so chock full of cheese the sight should make you feel sick. It doesn’t. It made me grin like hell, and completely forget the time because I was completely absorbed in it.

One of the reasons for me grinning like an idiot so much of the time was that it completely lacked any pretentious drivel where they spend 5-15 minutes of your time explaining (read: wasting) why this is plausible, why you shouldn’t question the story and the actions in it, and why this movie should be more engaging than sex but isn’t.

It simply, and flatly, states that there are teleporters out there in the world enjoying life and the possibilities (which do seem endless, as portrayed by the protagonist’s carefree lifestyle), that there are certain fruitcakes who hunt them for a number of reasons vaguely (if at all) described throughout the movie, and that this has been going on for ages. What’s not to like about that?

So instead of a drawn out attempt at a serious movie filled with awkward moments of bad acting and plot-holes the size of China where we continuously look forward to the nudity, more effects, or some badly choreographed fighting, we’re always served awesome effects and fast-paced dialogue (or just led through it really fast so we don’t get bored) that’s largely undiluted by unnecessary moments of extra acting, awkwardness or sad attempts at making the movie seem longer than it really is. No nudity though. Imagine the blow.

On the other hand I found myself amazed at the movie’s simple story-telling and on how I perceived the movie while I was watching it. If it’s intentional or not, the makers of the movie succeeded in making most of the backstory spin in my own mind, showing me only enough to drive the action onwards, and precious little else. The result was pretty great, because it didn’t feel like plotholes like it would in 99% of the other movies out there, but rather like an outline of a bigger thing, and I loved it. Every moment.

Just as an example; the response to “Why are you doing this to me, I haven’t done anything to you” we got the reply; “It’s because of what you turn into” (or become, not entirely sure). Nothing more, and to be perfectly honest it’s one of the few occasions where such a short sentence has carried so much more meaning than a host of biblical explanations with some esoteric layer of seriousness we’d probably grasp in a mushroom-induced coma-like trance.

Roland states that right before he’s about to half-ceremoniously plunge a knife into our protagonist’s heart, and it makes a world of sense, because teleportation is an enormous power. By now we all know that enormous power can also mean enormous abuse, it’s so ingrained in story-telling - from the bible to the latest Spiderman movies (which sort of sucked…).

It might be that I see too much in it, or maybe that’s how it’s made. In either case that’s how it came across.

I haven’t mentioned the effects a whole lot, and that’s for a reason. The effects weren’t flashy as hell (except for an oncoming bus, and a house going whoopla) in an intrusive way as you might expect from a movie where people instantly transport themselves to another part of the world. The cool thing was the amount of effects, and how they did it. Teleportation is an old dream, but it’s rarely been explored, and much less so in movies. The thing is, despite a flurry of effects and whoopla around the whole teleportation of themselves, and other things, it never became stupid. The more they did their flashy moves, the cooler it became, and it never felt gimmicky, just cool. It might be fascination of a “new” move, but it was still just awesome.

While Hayden Christiansen isn’t the best actor out there in this big bad world, and his mastery of this role wasn’t the most striking, he certainly filled the shoes acceptably. I couldn’t see any flaws, but no thunderous clapping for it either. Adding Samuel L. Jackson to the cast was a stroke of genius, giving the enemy just the right amount of serious bad ass attitude to make it feel just right. I kept looking for the moment where they’d fuck it all up with him saying “I’VE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING JUMPERS IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING MOVIE!”, and I could giggle uncontrollably. It never happened, fortunately.

The henchmen were of typical b-quality materials, when they appear, try to look cool while doing some stuff, and fails miserably at the hands of the hero(es). Nothing exciting about them at all, so the side of the paladins was completely filled by Jackson. Actually, most of the movie was carried by Jackson, despite his fairly rare appearances, and despite his lack of teleportational abilities (except looking like he’s able to pop up everywhere on the planet with no problems). He’s got a pretty strong personality I guess.

I totally loved the movie, and I’m sure you will too, as long as you expect to be entertained and to have fun, and not to be completely awed by LotR epicness and Vertigo psychology. I bet alot of people will disagree with me in the amount of story-content and how I viewed it, and I’m pretty sure I was just inspired by all the fun I had, but this movie was fun, fun, and more fun. I haven’t enjoyed a movie for the pure entertainment value for a long, long time. By accident, or intent, I don’t know. I look forward to Jumper II.

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