Too much of nothing

Rachel Bilson in Jumper

Jumper (2008) While I don’t normally read about films before seeing them — after all, what would be the point? — I allowed myself to scan the first paragraph of Michael Guillén’s review of this new action movie: “I liked Jumper so much that I wish I could be the chump who could jump right into (what I assume will be) the sequel. Do I really have to wait?” Encouraging words from a man of otherwise good taste, words that sent us to the theatre.

    Its anemic screenplay credited to no less than three writers working from an alleged novel by Steven Gould, Jumper sprints like the jumbled mind starved for Ritalin. Gruff ‘hero’ David Rice (bland, rubber-faced Hayden Christensen) leaves his broken home and alky father (cheeseball Michael Rooker) to physically jump through space portals to wherever he chooses. Assuming the screenwriters were schoolchildren whipping up playground scenarios, they forge ahead with predictable situations, from jumping into bank vaults to jumping atop the great pyramids. The three little tykes in question — David Goyer, Jim Uhls and Simon Kinberg — condescend to the requisite mushy love interest, a pretty young, bewildered actress named Rachel Bilson who’s given little to do other than mutter ‘what’s going on?’

    What, indeed. Jumper plays its shaky hand within twenty minutes, and pads the remaining seventy with hollow, vague digressions about government conspiracies, a duplicitous absentee mom (shame shame Diane Lane), and angry Samuel Jackson who runs around in a laughable white hairpiece. David hooks up with another jumper played by Jamie Bell, whose slurred Brit inflection warrants subtitles. There’s a lot of jumping, a lot of gut crunching, a lot of noise…none of it compelling.

    I’ve absolutely no quarrel with mindless action movies (Vin Diesel’s The Fast and the Furious and Ahh-nold’s Terminator 2 are among my guilty pleasures), but there are imperatives to form — tension, suspense, believability — which Jumper director Doug Liman sorely lacks. Upon leaving the theatre, Mrs. Flickhead gave her review: “That was the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” Mr. Liman’s name didn’t ring a bell at first, but looking him up afterward I realized that Mrs. Flickhead had never seen Mr. Liman’s Mr. And Mrs. Smith which is far, far worse than this latest mishegas.




The Amateurs (2005) Delayed for DVD release, this low budget affair written and directed by Michael Traeger is that rare thing, a sleepy rural ‘comedy’ with an over-the-top Jeff Bridges performance. He’s some kind of hillbilly genius out to make a porno movie in his bucolic backwater. Glenne Headly and Jeanne Tripplehorn co-star, with Ted Danson as a closeted gay (imagine his Body Heat lawyer via Nathan Lane). Dull, unfunny, uninvolving, meandering — some overzealous cinephiles may deem it an unrealized masterpiece.