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<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   "Jumper" Not good: Pitifully bad story of a man (toneless Hayden Christensen) with a talent for teleporting. There's no story, except the Jumper is chased by a bad guy (Samuel L. Jackson) and romances a high-school sweetheart (Rachel Bilson). Rated: PG-13 rating is for violence, language Now showing: Alderwood, Everett, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Mountlake, Cinerama, Metro, Oak Tree, Woodinville, Cascade Mall   CONTACT THE HERALD Melanie Munk, Features Editor munk@heraldnet.com   Published: Thursday, February 14, 2008 Pitiful 'Jumper' isn't just terrible, it's Hayden Christensen terrible By Robert Horton, Herald Movie Critic The badness of some movies takes a while to register. Not so with "Jumper": This one lets you know how awful it is from the first scene. There's the hero, David Rice, standing atop the head of the Sphinx. In voiceover, delivered in the uniquely toneless cadences of Hayden Christensen, he tells us what a cool guy he is and how he got the "digits" (nice outdated lingo) from a woman halfway across the world. David is a Jumper, a guy who can think himself from one physical location to another. Undoubtedly this will give rise to many jokes about reviewers wishing they could teleport to the theater next door. But I won't stoop to that. We see the genesis of David's jumping in a drawn-out flashback to his teen years, when he discovers his talent. "Did I just teleport?" he asks after he first jumps, which strikes me as the last thing someone would say in such a situation. David can teleport himself into bank vaults and come out with cash, but the movie takes care to note that he always leaves an IOU. Yeah, right. And how, by the way, does he plan to pay back this money, unless he steals it from someone else? This movie has weird logic. It does not have story. David is pursued by a snow-haired, Jumper-hating agent (Samuel L. Jackson, Christensen's "Star Wars" co-star), and romances a high-school sweetheart (Rachel Bilson). That's it, even though the movie tries to set up some backstory, presumably for future installments of a "Jumper" series. David's mother (Diane Lane) has a special role in all that. The only character with any pep is another Jumper (Jamie Bell), but the movie is falling apart by the time he hops in. Bell, who played "Billy Elliott" years ago, is a fierce little actor, and he easily blows the awkward Christensen off the screen. This mess was directed by Doug Liman, who distinguished himself with the first "Bourne" movie and the small-scaled "Go." Absolutely nothing works here, from the clunky dialogue to the weirdly timed love scenes (Liman lavishes heavy-breathing close-ups on former "O.C." star Bilson, to the point where you might get embarrassed for her). "Jumper" clocks in at under 90 minutes, which suggest that some material has been left on the cutting-room floor. For this we can only be thankful.

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