Movies Time Forgot: 'Jumper'

Jumper (2008)

Directed by Doug Liman

Written by David S. Goyer, Simon Kinberg, Jim Uhls

Starring Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson, Kristen Stewart, Michael Rooker, Anna Sophia Robb, Diane Lane, Samuel L. Jackson

Release Date February 14th, 2008

Published March 15th, 2024

Movies That Time Forgot is a new series where on Fridays I am going to revisit a movie from the past that I feel as if I am the only one who remembers it ever existed. It's an effort to make use of my vast knowledge of movies of the past 24 years and an effort to exercise my love of writing about movies, any movie I can get my hands on, for any reason. I'm starting with Jumper because it's an interestingly bad movie, forgotten for a good reason.

David Rice (Hayden Christensen) can be anywhere he imagines in a moment's notice. Surfing in Hawaii, lunching atop the sphinx, or across his apartment without having to step around the coffee table, David has the ability "Jump" anywhere. It's a cool talent to have. David uses this unique talent to rob banks. Don't fret, he leaves IOU's. That is the premise of Jumper the latest from director Doug Liman starring the perpetually quivery Hayden Christensen.

As a teenager David Rice fell through the thin ice of a lake and was nearly killed. At the last moment he imagined the local library and was transported there. Slowly coming to grips with this new ability to go anywhere he wants with a single thought, David starts by using his new ability to escape his angry, bitter father (Michael Rooker). Needing a getaway location, David takes off for New York and is soon robbing banks to finance a comfortable lifestyle. It is then that he meets Roland Cox (Samuel L. Jackson) who is some kind of supernatural cop. Roland explains the plot, David is a Jumper and Roland is a Paladin. Paladin's hunt Jumpers and kill them.

Narrowly escaping his paladin encounter, David meets a fellow Jumper named Griffin (Jamie Bell) and is warned that Paladins will kill everyone he has ever known in their attempt to find him. This leads David back home and to the girl he left behind, Millie (Rachel Bilson). While David watches out for the Paladins, David and Millie rekindle their childhood romance. Once the Paladins arrive however, it kicks off a worldwide war between Jumpers and Paladins.

It's not a bad comic book premise really. The problem is it's underdeveloped as a movie. The rules for Jumpers and Paladins are vague and are sloppily made up as the movie goes along. Rules are then sloppily disregarded when the plot requires them to be. The idea is merely a hanger on which director Doug Liman and his effects team can hang a number of huge special effects shots. Jumper thus becomes a CGI travelogue of worldwide locations from Tokyo to London to Rome to whatever other touristy location a majority of the audience might recognize. The effects aren't bad, for the most part, but who cares, we are there for a moment and gone soon after. It's like speed running the Travel Channel.

On top of all that, you cannot imagine a less interesting travel companion than the former Anakin Skywalker aka Quiver-lips, aka Hayden Christensen. I did my best to ignore his many flaws when he starred in the final two Star Wars movies but as Christensen tried to stick around as a leading man after Star Wars, his flaws only become more pronounced. Christensen is nearly unwatchable in Jumper. His lip on a permanent quiver, his voice wavering, and his eyes constantly with tears at the ready, Christensen in 2008 made Orlando Bloom look like John Wayne.

I'm not saying all heroes need to be manly men but Jumper tries to lie to us and portray Christensen as a tough kid. It doesn't work. Standing against Samuel L. Jackson, Christensen looks even more childlike and fearful. Yet, we are asked to believe that these two men are evenly matched and that Jackson could be bested by this boy. This is Sam Jackson looking old and tired and I still never believed Christenson's "hero" was a match for him. Billy Elliott's Jamie Bell, no Fess Parker in his own right, stands better against Jackson in Jumper. Whether that means that Bell is so much better than Christensen or that Christensen makes him look that good is a fair question.

Jumper wastes a unique, high-concept premise on the idea that Hayden Christensen was enough of a movie star to get us past the weaknesses of the plot. He was not. Jumper fell into obscurity for a reason. Despite having Samuel L. Jackson, and a very young, blink and you will miss her, Kristen Stewart, it's Christensen's vapid, charisma free, entirely empty performance that made certain that few people, aside from myself would ever remember that Jumper had existed.

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