Saturday, March 8, 2008

Movie Review: Jumper



My sister is in town! She flew in today and offered the boy and I a chance to get out for a date - which we did after a lovely spaghetti dinner cooked by yours truly.

Since his birthday was this past week, and he rarely gets to go to the movies, he got to pick the flick, and he chose Jumper.

Overall, the film was okay. Basically a sci/fi-fantasy hybrid, it centers around the world of David, a "jumper" - basically a person who can teleport to anywhere at any given time. We meet him in high school, and he's the typical picked-upon weakling...until he falls through a frozen river and ends up in the stacks of the local public library.

Of course, the crush of his life is the unattainable girl from school - I preferred the younger version played by Annasophia Robb over Rachel Bilson's college coed - and the sidekick, an acerbic Brit called Griffin.

The bad guy is played by Samuel L. Jackson, who is a badass par excellence and seems born to play these types of roles. He is a "paladin" named Roland - which any good fantasy geek knows is a form of a holy warrior of some sort - in existence since the Middle Ages. "Roland" is also the name of the Gunslinger in The Dark Tower series by Stephen King - I can't help but wonder if the name was used specifically to conjure images of King's gunslinger.

Vastly underused (in my opinion) is Diane Lane, who plays David's mother. She abandoned him at age 5, and though her role in his life is explained at the end of the movie, I still felt she should have had more presence, at least as much as Roland, if not more.

Overall, not the type of movie I'd normally go see. However, I'd give it a 6 out of 10 - and the fact that I got a date with my husband, regardless of cinematic choice, gives the movie bonus points.

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