Jumper (2008, USA)

It's kind of hard to explain how bad Jumper really is without going into hyperbole. It's so bad that it's not really funny at all, which is a shame, because there's a lot of fodder here, what with a white-haired Samuel L. Jackson chasing an incredibly wooden Hayden Christensen around the world, on the front lines of a war between people who can jump through space and those who wish to stop them. Well, "war" may be a bit overblown, since we only ever see a couple of jumpers in the movie, and they don't seem terribly organized.

In any case, shame on you, Doug Liman. You've made some awfully entertaining movies, but this is not one of them. Worse, it's sloppy - the overall feeling is that all of the independent sequences were shot and then put in a blender rather than edited in any logical way. Thus, David (Christensen) learns to control his jumping abilities, robs a couple of banks, beds the ladies and has lunch on the Sphinx, until one morning Jackson shows up and tries to kill him. Naturally, this is the perfect time for David to hunt down his childhood sweetheart (Rachel Bilson, competing with Christensen for the annual Keanu Reeves blankness award) and drag her around the world. David seems somewhat surprised when Jackson and his friends show up again to try to kill him and take the girl hostage. Really? Because for most people, that would be the first thing expected. But David, and the filmmakers, aren't quite that bright, and their dimness is the enduring takeaway from Jumper.