The Cinema of the Four

Jumper

In the latter part of the Victorian era, great-grandfather and his friend Dr. Watson got much use out of their Bradshaw railway guide, as did so many of their time. Even those who never travelled could use the guide to connect the dots for potentially putting themselves from point A to point B on a whim. The modern era has given us Mapquest and TomTom for piloting our personal motor vehicles in a similar manner. Expedia and the airlines can get one from this side of the world to the other in an amazingly short time. And yet, this generation of travelers still wants something more.

So it was that I found myself seated in a first-class theater seat this afternoon, being transported to the fantasy world of “Jumper,” a movie about a rare class of individual born with the ability to teleport instantly to anyplace their mind can imagine – a truly desirable thing to the born remote-control channel surfers of the world. To be able to flip from destination to destination with but a thought – where once man dreamed of flight, now he dreams of instant travel gratification.

And who do we find in this situation? Hayden Christiansen, late of Anakin Skywalker infamy, and his girlfriend Rachel Bilson (familiar to fans of TV’s “Chuck” as his girlfriend from the deli). Of course, if we are to have a teleporter or two in the world, we must also have those who stalk teleporters, led by the world’s foremost master of yelling at people, Samuel L. Jackson. Familiar faces like Diane Lane, Jamie Bell, Michael Rooker, and Anna Sofia Robb round out the cast making this a movie fan’s movie.

Yet nobody’s acting talents are much put to the test in this film. It’s an action flick that’s all about the ultimate mode of tourist travel. Deeper questions, like great power’s ties to great responsibility and great corruption, are touched on but left in the wormhole wake as people pop from here to there, and characters get left behind in some very odd places. In the end, the movie feels very much like a television pilot with a massive budget (not that that’s a bad thing) leaving the viewer looking for what’s to come.