This is how you butcher a perfectly good book story.
I like Doug Liman's movies - I thoroughly enjoyed The Bourne Indentity, Swingers & Edge of Tomorrow. Jumper, on the other hand is the worst movie I've seen so far, that was directed by Mr Liman. Ended up being very disappointing. It is a very mediocre Young Adult flick at most. And it could have been much more than that.
The whole cast really struggles to hold this thing together, it's really boring in places - the premise is great, but that's only due to the source material being great. Hayden Christensen never really acts, he just pulls 3 or 4 different impressions throughout the whole movie, adjusting accordingly to a scene that plays out. Rachel Bilson really underperforms here, which was rather sad to watch & the only positive I can come up with is Jamie Bell and his portrayal of Griffin (who's not even in the original book... that tells a lot about this picture). Sam L Jackson does his usual... he can be enjoyable even when playing in the daftest of movies.
Generally, a rather disappointing experience from a director I appreciate. I guess that's what script rewrites and filming in 20 cities & 14 countries does to your movie. It's all over the place.
Review by Imme van GorpBlockedParent2023-10-11T11:22:12Z
Okay, so first of all, the concept of this movie is honestly just super cool. The idea of someone being able to jump from one place to another, all over the world, is just so awesome and I love that this movie was mostly about that. I remember watching this movie years ago and being absolutely obsessed with this superpower; I literally dreamed of how amazing it would be to be able to do that, because seriously, who doesn't think that teleportation would be the coolest thing ever??
Nonetheless, the rest of the storyline isn't too great. After a certain point in the movie we don't focus a lot on David's superpower anymore and what he can do with it, but instead we are sucked into this random war between Jumpers and those who want to kill them. I honestly didn't care too much about any of that, and I could have done without it.
The romance part also wasn't too great. It started out pretty cute when David and Millie were still in high school, but when they meet again after the time jump it just felt silly and ridiculous. They had no chemistry or development within their relationship, and it kind of just felt shallow.