The Anakin Effect: Jumper (Movie) Review
Posted on
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
There are certain actors whose effect onscreen cannot be ignored, cannot be glossed over, and cannot be looked past. Hayden Christensen is one such actor. I've watched him play the teenage and adult Anakin/Darth Vader in the execrable Star Wars prequels and I've watched him play the young plagiarist in Shattered Glass. I've tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, chalking his horrible performance in the Star Wars movies up to George Lucas' terrible direction and piss-poor dialogue. I attributed his unlikeable nature in Glass to the very unlikeable nature of the character he was portraying. Having now seen his turn in Jumper, I can safely say, it's not just me, it's him.
Don't get me wrong, Jumper is by no means a terrible movie. In fact, it's a moderately enjoyable sci-fi adventure flick, with impressive special effects and workman cinematography. But Christensen exhibits classic symptoms of the Anakin Effect, a cinematic phenomenon formerly known as the Tom Cruise Effect. No matter what role he is placed in, nor how good the movie is, I just cannot stand this actor, and this repulsion affects my enjoyment of the the entire movie. It happened with Cruise in War of the Worlds, and it happens here. The actor just cannot extract any empathy from me. His first appearance makes me think he's a whiny, smug douchebag and my view of the character through the actor never changes. It's as if Anakin was reborn on Earth as another whiny twat with a different set of force powers.
As I said, the movie is not a bad one. The story is very loosely based on the Steven Gould novel of the same name, about a teenager, David Rice, who learns he can teleport to any place he has been or can picture in his mind. Upon gaining the power, he leaves his abusive father and moves to New York, where he robs a bank and starts a new life. Skip ahead eight years (which is incidentally the time period the book covers), and he's set up in a ritzy New York apartment, from which he teleports all over the world daily, living a life of luxurious hedonism. At this point, the white-haired Sam Jackson as the paladin Roland appears to kill Rice for being an abomination. We later learn that paladins are a centuries old religious organization dedicated to destroying jumpers, for they believe only God should have the power to be everywhere.
Here is where the movie begins to fail, thanks to the use of characters who act entirely too goddamn stupid. During the fight with Roland, David discovers that paladins know how to stop his jumping ability, by running 1000 volts through his body, using a taser-whip. Rice barely escapes back to his home town, where his first thought is to... hook up with the girl he had a crush on in high school (played by Rachel Bilson)? Now, we've already seen him jet across the world, banging a hot chick in London because he's rich and pretty, but I can accept that he wants that first love, a love he was never able to experience. She thinks he's dead, but accepts pretty easily that he isn't, even deciding to take him up on his offer to fly to Rome that very minute. Not only is Rice ignoring the fact that Roland was able to find him in New York, he apparently thinks Roland can't track him when he buys a commerical airline ticket to Rome. How did he manage to survive undiscovered for eight years being a complete dumbass? Millie, Bilson's character, also ignores the fact that her not-dead not-boyfriend has just showed up eight years later and stared at her across a room for 45 minutes, and decides that she really wants to go to Rome so badly, she'll do so with some guy who was sweet to her in high school. And of course, she'll lay him like bricks when they get to Rome. After all, a free trip to Rome isn't really free.
The movie gets better once the brain shuts down and stops thinking about the ridiculous nature of this set up, because we get some gosh wow fights in the Colosseum. Rice meets up with an English jumper named Griffin, who knows all about "the war" between jumpers and paladins. The war apparently consists of Griffin, some guy in some backwater jungle and now Rice. Griffin's character is the most entertaining character in the movie, and his control of the jumping ability makes for some impressive action sequences. But the movie never really recovers from those first blind leaps of logic the audience is required to make. It ambles along with Rice making repeatedly idiotic maneuvers to try to save Millie and keep her love, with a sideplot thrown in about Rice's long-lost mother thrown in to give the movie intrigue. It wraps up with a bangup action sequence, but unfortunately, the movie doesn't satisfactorily resolve any of the hanging plot threads. The whole resolution felt extremely rushed, as if the ending was written but some producer had the bright idea to cut it so as to leave an asston of room for a sequel. As a result, the movie feels incomplete.
Jumper is a movie I would recommend seeing on DVD. It's certainly not worth the regular price of admission, and only those who can stomach the Anakin Effect or are really eager to see the movie should see it on a matinee. I would give it 6 stars out of 10. Perhaps a sequel will end better, but I'm just not sure this movie deserves one.
Don't get me wrong, Jumper is by no means a terrible movie. In fact, it's a moderately enjoyable sci-fi adventure flick, with impressive special effects and workman cinematography. But Christensen exhibits classic symptoms of the Anakin Effect, a cinematic phenomenon formerly known as the Tom Cruise Effect. No matter what role he is placed in, nor how good the movie is, I just cannot stand this actor, and this repulsion affects my enjoyment of the the entire movie. It happened with Cruise in War of the Worlds, and it happens here. The actor just cannot extract any empathy from me. His first appearance makes me think he's a whiny, smug douchebag and my view of the character through the actor never changes. It's as if Anakin was reborn on Earth as another whiny twat with a different set of force powers.
As I said, the movie is not a bad one. The story is very loosely based on the Steven Gould novel of the same name, about a teenager, David Rice, who learns he can teleport to any place he has been or can picture in his mind. Upon gaining the power, he leaves his abusive father and moves to New York, where he robs a bank and starts a new life. Skip ahead eight years (which is incidentally the time period the book covers), and he's set up in a ritzy New York apartment, from which he teleports all over the world daily, living a life of luxurious hedonism. At this point, the white-haired Sam Jackson as the paladin Roland appears to kill Rice for being an abomination. We later learn that paladins are a centuries old religious organization dedicated to destroying jumpers, for they believe only God should have the power to be everywhere.
Here is where the movie begins to fail, thanks to the use of characters who act entirely too goddamn stupid. During the fight with Roland, David discovers that paladins know how to stop his jumping ability, by running 1000 volts through his body, using a taser-whip. Rice barely escapes back to his home town, where his first thought is to... hook up with the girl he had a crush on in high school (played by Rachel Bilson)? Now, we've already seen him jet across the world, banging a hot chick in London because he's rich and pretty, but I can accept that he wants that first love, a love he was never able to experience. She thinks he's dead, but accepts pretty easily that he isn't, even deciding to take him up on his offer to fly to Rome that very minute. Not only is Rice ignoring the fact that Roland was able to find him in New York, he apparently thinks Roland can't track him when he buys a commerical airline ticket to Rome. How did he manage to survive undiscovered for eight years being a complete dumbass? Millie, Bilson's character, also ignores the fact that her not-dead not-boyfriend has just showed up eight years later and stared at her across a room for 45 minutes, and decides that she really wants to go to Rome so badly, she'll do so with some guy who was sweet to her in high school. And of course, she'll lay him like bricks when they get to Rome. After all, a free trip to Rome isn't really free.
The movie gets better once the brain shuts down and stops thinking about the ridiculous nature of this set up, because we get some gosh wow fights in the Colosseum. Rice meets up with an English jumper named Griffin, who knows all about "the war" between jumpers and paladins. The war apparently consists of Griffin, some guy in some backwater jungle and now Rice. Griffin's character is the most entertaining character in the movie, and his control of the jumping ability makes for some impressive action sequences. But the movie never really recovers from those first blind leaps of logic the audience is required to make. It ambles along with Rice making repeatedly idiotic maneuvers to try to save Millie and keep her love, with a sideplot thrown in about Rice's long-lost mother thrown in to give the movie intrigue. It wraps up with a bangup action sequence, but unfortunately, the movie doesn't satisfactorily resolve any of the hanging plot threads. The whole resolution felt extremely rushed, as if the ending was written but some producer had the bright idea to cut it so as to leave an asston of room for a sequel. As a result, the movie feels incomplete.
Jumper is a movie I would recommend seeing on DVD. It's certainly not worth the regular price of admission, and only those who can stomach the Anakin Effect or are really eager to see the movie should see it on a matinee. I would give it 6 stars out of 10. Perhaps a sequel will end better, but I'm just not sure this movie deserves one.
Labels: Movies, Science-Fiction
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:30 AM
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