Singularity

Sam reviews…

Jun.27, 2008, filed under Miscellany

Jumper.

I’ll say from the start that it was a toss-up between this and 30 Days of Night (which I’ve got to watch tonight) and Munky chose Jumper on the basis he thought it would make excellent rant-fodder for Frood and myself. You know, get us (well, me) shouting at the tellybox the way we did at the execrable Core (long since out-shited by Sunshine).

For some reason he left it behind when he went down south again. I’ll put it in the post.

The film starts by making it quite clear, from the start, that our “hero”, played by Barbie-boy Hayden Cristiansen, is an utter wanker with no redeeming personality features who really needs a good smack round the face with a studded 3 by 4. It then moves into flashback mode to set out the unrequited love trope of young David and the girl Millie, during which there is an unfortunate river-ice accident and David finds himself involuntarily teleporting himself to the local library to avoid hypothermia and drowning. No hilarity ensues.

Young David, demonstrating that the cliché of boy hates father even though father is just trying to do his best in difficult circumstances is alive and well, then does a runner, just like his mum did. Frankly if I’d been his mother I’d have fucked off sharpish as well. He goes to the Big City [TM] and sets himself up as independently wealthy by using his new-found power to rob a bank. Henceforth he spends his time jumping around the globe, surfing in Hawaii after breakfast and lunching in London before enjoying the sunset from the top of the Sphinx. As you do.

At this point the plot thickens. Roland, played by Samuel L Jackson paying the rent with stupid-ass painted white hair, turns up and makes it clear that what could have been a semi-decent action flick has ruined all hope of identifying with any one of the main characters by killing some oriental bloke in a jungle and justifying it by saying only God should have the power to be all places at once.

Roland is head of a bunch of people going by the name of paladins, who apparently were responsible for the witch hunts (all witches were really jumpers, dontcha know) and their job is to kill jumpers. He goes after David and David heads home to pick up Millie and take her on a dream date to Rome. By plane. Because obviously he can’t tell his childhood sweetheart that they could just teleport there.

In Rome he meets up with Brit Boy Griffin, played by Jamie Bell, who is the only character in the film worth any split second of screen time. Griffin’s mission in life is to kill paladins. Henceforth the film devolves into a boring take on the reluctant buddy-movie, with much chase action involving jumping through each other’s “jump scars” and Griffin’s evidently superior personality being devalued by a trite moral bankruptcy that they didn’t even have the decency to justify adequately.

You know, I hate bipolar movies. My Dad loves them. He likes it when all things turn out right in the end and the good guy gets the girl. He’d really like this film if it were not for the fact that the plot, despite being straightforward and simplistic, is rendered disjointed by a complete failure to join the various sequences together in any way resembling a coherent picture. The continuity relies on the viewer having the attention span of a hamster overdosed on Sunny D and ephedrine and absolutely no interest in anything involving exposition or storytelling. You know exactly where the film is going to end up and yet the method of getting there seems to be a waste of screen time.

Verdict: dull as dishwater and thoroughly disappointing. They could have made so much with the premise, but apparently couldn’t be arsed. Zero chemistry, no humour, and a bunch of characters I’d quite happily lock in a room together until they’d killed each other.

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