REEL Review: JUMPER
February 19th, 2008
By: Alexander B. Huls
If any film proves that you need to be emotionally invested in its main character to get you to care about what happens throughout the course of the film, let alone what happens to that character, it’s JUMPER.
David Rice starts out leading your painfully clichéd miserable teenaged life. He’s your typical high school outsider “freak,” who gets picked on by the school bully who – of course – is dating David’s childhood crush, Millie, and comes from a broken home. So when David discovers that he’s a “jumper,” someone with the ability to teleport, it’s no surprise that he takes his new found powers and blows out of town. In no time he makes his way to New York City, develops his powers, and quickly finds a way to use it for his own day-to-day survival (i.e. robbing banks). Flash forward a few years, and a now twenty-something David lives in fancy loft garnished with photos of all the places he’s been, and a vault full of money.
It’s at this point where you start to realize David just isn’t likeable. He’s essentially a man who never stopped being a teenager, using his powers to basically live a life that is an adolescent boy’s fantasy come true. In one sequence he teleports around his apartment with teenage lethargy (instead of reaching for a remote on a couch, he teleports to the other side of the couch), jumps on top of the Sphinx for a leisure lunch, then England for a one night stand (his ability helping him avoid the “walk of shame”), and finally to Fiji for some surfing.
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