Film Footle: Jumper

"It's astonishing. Frankly astonishing. The man actually has charisn'tma."

"Your meaning?"

"I mean he's so dreadful he fascinates people."

Terry Pratchett - Feet of Clay


Can there by a young "actor" around at the moment who has less talent and charisma than Hayden Christensen? Granted, he's extremely pretty, but so is a tree, and that has more personality. Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones was a pretty poor showing from Christensen, but that could have been put down to George Lucas and his increasingly deteriorating script quality. Jumper's script displays no genius either, but next to Jamie Bell's polished performance there's nothing for Christensen to hide behind here.

Jumper is a tale of teleporting. Unlike most people who discover that they've got a superhero power, David Rice doesn't bother saving people from disaster but instead robs a bank and hops around the world living the high life. An encounter with a "Palladin", one of an unexplained group of Jumper-killing warriors, leads him home to his childhood sweetheart Millie and into a mystery involving his long-gone mother, Palladin-killing Jumper Griffin and a whole host of international locations.

First, the good - after all, that shouldn't take too long. Doug Liman, the director behind The Bourne Identity (brilliant) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (stylishly indifferent) is an absolute master of car chases, and I wonder if he deliberately added Jamie Bell's character Griffin's talent for Jumping with moving vehicles in order to demonstrate that. If so, good for him, because it was one of the few strong points of the movie. Liman also chose, again wisely, to film on location wherever possible, so the impact of the Sphynx, the Colosseum and other classic sites was not diminished. The direction is generally a damn sight more lively and stylish than the action, anyway.

Jamie Bell was also very good. Full of surprisingly visceral power, too; I never thought of grown-up Billy Elliot as an action star before and I was really pleasantly surprised. Rachel Bilson tries terribly hard and were she placed opposite a lead male who had more personality than a 2 x 4, she'd probably do very well. Diane Lane, though wasted in an infinitesimally tiny role that is presumably designed to be evolved in the inevitable sequel, was typically polished. Samuel L. Jackson produced no surprises as Palladin Roland, but didn't disappoint.

Now the bad. Are you sitting comfortably?

I can only assume that Stephen Gould's novel was severely gutted to produce the convoluted script hacked together by David S. Goyer, Jim Uhls, Simon Kinberg. Oh, for a WGA strike when this was written! There's something to be said for minimising exposition, but leaving it all for a flashy sequel is lazy and tears the dramatic tension out of the belly of a film, something that is only too necessary when the lead actor could be out-manouevred by a canny boiled egg.

Because of Christensen's awful, awful acting - I know they say all acting is reacting, but surely not several seconds late in the manner of a Restoration comedy performed at a particularly talent-free school - there is, anyway, no heart here. His sudden relationship with Bilson, where she takes his reappearance with almost disinterested calm, suddenly becoming shrill and questioning only after flying half-way across the world with him, is more unrealistic than the teleporting.

It was a particularly bad move to cast Max Therriot and AnnaSophie Robb as the young David and Millie. Not only do they look nothing like the older versions of themselves, they are considerably more talented. Therriot in particular is someone to watch, with emotional range as well as indie-kid good looks - the perfect modern film star combination.

So far we have convoluted, meaningless plot, lack of emotional punch or cohesion and a really terrible central performance. You want more? Well, I don't have the heart to rip into this one-star offering any longer; nitpicking about the small details just takes away from the disastrously appalling whole. At least four people wandered into the wrong cinema before realising Cloverfield was on next door. They were the lucky ones.