Movie Review: Jumper

WARNING: Reading this review will spoil the movie, but not as much as watching the movie will spoil the movie.

How many cliché’s can be fit into one film whilst still pointing out that people who fight on the side of God are the bad guys? Let’s see…

Wimpy kid (David, who is played by Hayden Christensen which is only worth mentioning because he is really Darth Vader) with no parents and a crush on a girl figures out he has a supernatural power while being picked on by a bully at school. Yeah, just like Spiderman. And he uses his power to pay the bully back. Of course he does. We’ve seen this before.

His power is teleportation, but that’s not cool enough, so they call it “jumping”.

He uses his new power to build personal wealth (dishonestly, as you can imagine), and great care is given to point out the fact that he doesn’t give a care about anyone but himself. Yeah, kind of like Spiderman 3. But then he finds someone to care about. Of course he does. And who do you think that was? The girl from school all grown up and … O.K. looking, of course.

They have fun, do some PG-13 stuff, but of course, that can’t last. The movie is PG-13, after all. But the fun can’t last either because the good guy… I mean bad guy catches up to them and the war ensues (said good/bad guy is played by Samuel L Jackson, which is only worth mentioning because he is really Mace Windu). David enlists the help of another “Jumper” to mentor him, but the mentor turns out to be not that great of a person.

Other than the fact that the protagonist is weak, even with super powers, what primarily makes this movie stupid is that the main antagonist is called a “paladin” and everyone knows that paladins were totally sweet and righteous Christian knights back in the Middle Ages. Anyway, this “paladin” fights on behalf of “God” too, only his aim is to rid the world of “Jumpers” because “only God should have the power to be in all places at once.” Whatever. Why does the God-fearer always have to be a stick in the mud (or a knife in the chest as was the case here)? I recall a certain teleporter who saw no conflict whatsoever between his powers and his Christian calling. Anyway, let’s finish this.

In the end, David doesn’t slay his Goliath, rather he teleports, er I mean jumps him out in the middle of nowhere (the Grand Canyon, actually). What a nice guy. If he would have just jumped him to Chancellor Palpatine’s quarters on Coruscant and pushed him out a window, he could have been well on his way to the Dark Side…