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Jumper, the second big-budget, highly anticipated sci-fi movie of 2008 (the first being Cloverfield), follows a mindset that has been around since the early days of cinema: "If you spend enough money on promotion, special effects, and actors, no one will notice that the plot is bad, the script worse, and the actors are sleepwalking their way to a paycheck."

Like most fantasy/science fiction movies, our hero, David "Davey" Rice (Hayden "I make Keanu Reeves look positively lifelike" Christensen), starts out as an unassuming kid (Max "I show more skill in my short screen time than Christensen does for the entire film" Theriot). He spends many of his days avoiding the local school bully (Jesse "Yes, that is my real name" James) and trying to talk to his adolescent crush, Millie (AnnaSophia Robb). After falling into a frigid river, however, young David learns that he can "jump," or teleport to another area, assuming he's seen that area at least once. He then uses this ability to jump all around the world, taking time to rob a bank or two along the way.

Bored yet? If not, just wait for the villainous Paladins, who, led by silver-haired Roland (Samuel L. "I may take bad roles, but I can make the worst dialogue sound badass" Jackson), wish to eliminate all of the jumpers from the world for their perceived unholiness (most apparent when Roland snarls, "Only god should have that power."). Now, between avoiding the Paladins and spending his leisure time on top of the Sphinx, David decides to check in on Millie (Rachel "I was on the OC, which should tell you something about my acting ability" Bilson), who is not nearly surprised as she should be seeing someone who should've drowned in the frozen river years ago. They start a torrid romance that is then interrupted by those pesky Paladins, and David sets off with fellow jumper and rebel Griffin (Jamie "I am the best thing about this movie" Bell) to fight the Paladins and end their tyrannical persecution of jumpers (of which there are apparently many more, but we don't really see any others in the film).

The plot only goes downhill from there, with the holes in the plot battling it out with the dialogue (the opening monologue from Christensen, where he claims he used to be a "chump like you," sets a low bar which is never raised) and Christensen's lack of emotional range (I'm shocked he hasn't played a robot yet) as the things that weigh this movie down the most. That's not to say nothing else is wrong with Jumper, however, as the directing is bad (who the hell let the cameraman film a scene half blocked off by Christensen's head?) and the special effects really don't provide anything new. Really, the only things keeping this movie from being completely worthless are Samuel L. Jackson's commanding presence, which unfortunately is almost completely wasted on Roland, who is one of the worst characters Jackson has ever played, and Jamie Bell, who has the unenviable task of exuding enough charisma and wit to counterbalance Christensen's lack of ability, yet still manages to perform admirably.

Other than those two, however, Jumper has very little about it to recommend, and it's easy to see why this movie was released in February, so that it could at least perform decently at the box office and not get blown away by the (presumably) better blockbusters that will storm the screen come summer.

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Copyright 2008 Benjamin Wood