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Jumper
PG-13

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Jumper David Rice (Hayden Christensen) reveals his teleporting abilities to Millie (Rachel Bilson).

Jumper is one seriously baffling move for director Doug Liman, the live wire who gave us the nervy, kinetic Swingers and The Bourne Identity. Based on Steven Gould's novel, the sci-fi action movie has potential for coolness, but instead is uninvolving, rushed and chaotic. David Rice (Hayden Christensen) is a young guy from Ann Arbor, Michigan who learns after a near-fatal accident that he has the power to teleport himself through time-space wormholes anywhere he pleases. Faster than you can say Quantum Leap meets The Butterfly Effect, the hero, not being a particularly deep or thoughtful type, uses his new superhero-worthy gifts by robbing a bank to set himself up in a swank New York penthouse, then zipping around to wherever he wants, trolling Irish pubs, checking out Big Ben, riding killer waves in Fiji, or checking out the Egyptian pyramids. Apparently finding it easier to change locales than change his facial expression, Christensen and his photogenic leapfrogging make his life look like one long, blurry, sped-up dream -- or at least like the setup for a fairly cool fantasy TV series. He pursues his dream girl, played by the appropriately dreamy Rachel Bilson, and whisks her off for an idyllic Roman holiday, and finds a kind of guardian angel in a fellow "jumper" (played by Jamie Bell, the best thing in the whole flick).


David (Hayden Christensen) can teleport anywhere in the world with guardian angel jumper Griffin (Jamie Bell).
Alas, being a "jumper" comes with consequences. Samuel L. Jackson, sporting a bewildering platinum blond wig, zooms onto the scene as one of the secret order of Paladins, who have it as their mission to lasso and destroy all jumpers with their godlike powers of omnipresence. It all ends up in a noisy, frantic, unsatisfying action sequence, but, really, by that point, you'll have already been asked to overlook so many plotholes; the only sane response is to be thinking about where you're going to eat later. Christensen and Bilson can't overcome an illogical script, groaner-level dialogue and zero character development. Diane Lane pops in only long enough to avoid massive embarrassment. Jumper, which looks like it cost a bundle, is the sort of thing you should see on a matinee day when you can only muster the attention span of a gnat.

by Stephen Rebello

Photos: top: Philippe Antonello; bottom: Michael Gibson ™&©2008 Twentieth Century Fox and Regency Enterprises. All rights reserved.

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