Jumper
So, from Tinsel Town I’ll write about a movie. On Wednesday night Steve Gould and Laura Mixon-Gould invited me to a sneak preview of JUMPER. There was going to be a big part of the New Mexico folk on Thursday night, the official opening night, but unfortunately I was on an airplane to L.A.
It’s a tremendous thrill when a book writer gets a win. It’s tough to make a living writing prose, so you give a big cheer when a writer gets a piece of Hollywood money. Jumper is also one of those books that has long, strong legs because it speaks to young people about issues that torment and define their lives. It’s an emotionally powerful book.
I’m afraid the movie missed that emotional power. It was fun, I really liked the two young men playing David (Hayden Christensen) and Griffin (Jamie Bell), there were some terrific set pieces. Where it failed for me was in motivation.
The most powerful relationship was between the two young men. I wanted a movie where they teamed up much earlier, and worked together much longer. They had great chemistry.
What didn’t work was the love story because it felt sketchy. Here’s my arrogant fix — I would have had David returning home frequently to woo this girl. He has money, he can jump, why not spend time with her? The movie was trying to do so many things early in the film that it lost the emotional drive. We’ve got David learning to teleport, then using it to rob a bank, then a fairly long run of scenes about how great it is to be rich, young and carefree. Finally a fly lands in the ointment, and _then_ he goes home to look longingly at the girl, and evenutally hook up with her.
Finally Griffen shows up, and then things just start to rock.
I hope this movie does really, really well. It’s a fun two hours, and I didn’t find Christensen wooden. He was playing against a guy who got to chew the scenary, and that’s always hard. What I’d really like is the further adventures of Griffen and David.
Some of the reveiwers have complained because the director didn’t explain the “rules” of jumping. It’s always a gamble. When you explain you can end up stopping the film dead in its tracks. If you don’t explain you risk the audience tuning out. It’s why it’s so hard to do science fiction well on screen whe you only have two hours.
I’d still say go and have fun. Because it’s based on a very fine book, and let’s give a writer a big win.
Melinda
February 19th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
The filming style of Jumper made me feel like i myself was jumping around, which was cool. Also Christensen’s lines were as short as possible, which was ideal for the movie’s overall quality.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I liked the “jumping” effect that looked like space had been torn for a brief instant. I also liked the big bus set piece at the end of the movie.
I just don’t think it’s a good movie because it felt like a paint by numbers script. Here’s the sex scene, here’s the misunderstanding scene, here’s the bad guy rant scene, here’s the moment when the buddies become buddies who quip together.
I also found it just silly that jumpers and paladins have lasted for centuries and _nobody has noticed_. Steve handles that wonderfully in his book, but the movie didn’t do it so well.