Jumper: off a cliff
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008I’ll put it this way – when the movie was over, K and I looked at each other and just said “huh”.
The premise is pretty cool, and some of the action is entertaining, but the screenwriters and director obviously had a hard time adapting the comic book to the big screen. Usually a plot helps… or maybe the problem is that there’s no well-defined villian/hero; at various times those roles swap back and forth. The movie is based on the graphic novel Jumper by Steven Gould – and the differences between the movie and the book was pretty substantial. Apparently most of the book-movie discrepancies are well correlated to the bits that come across as disconnected in the movie. To quote the Geeks of Doom review “It is curious why you would take proven material, skin the meat from it, and try to dress it up in something different. Guess they should have left well enough alone.” Like the Golden Compass book/movie problems, I suppose.
The NYT review is fantastically harsh, check it out. I’d say it’s certainly worth seeing on a big screen, but don’t pay too much. Entertaining fluff without any proper conclusion.
