Jumper Hopes Squashed Like Flat Bug

Sigh. Well, doesn't this suck. First, I forget Jumper is coming out at all, and then read that Eminem almost had the lead role. That got me excited and curious, and I noted that the movie was playing tonight. Wow. Maybe I could sneak out after the wifey went to bed and see it. Then I said in my serious voice, "It's Valentines. Have you no soul? Have you no honor?" And besides, what if it's bad? So I went to my old faithful, my muse, Mr. Roger Ebert. And here's what the old soul had to say:

In a world gone horribly wrong, where actions have no consequences, where all of humanity has become unaccountably oblivious to blatant violations of the time-space continuum, where rules exist not to be broken but to be disregarded, where continuity is irrelevant... anything is possible!

There you have the premise for Doug Liman's "Jumper: The Prequel," a movie so silly you may find yourself giggling helplessly even as you wish you could magically transport yourself almost anywhere else in the world but where you are, in front of the screen showing it.

Yes folks, you read that right. Ebert gave it one of his rare 1.5 stars. Which means, no matter how big of a big geek you are. No matter how much you love teleportation or think Nightcrawler is a tragic, undervalued member of the X-men. No matter how much you loved this trailer, and could watch it over and over. No matter how much you want this movie to be great, it just won't be. It will be horribly, horribly bad. You will hate Doug Liman for wasting your precious time. You will find yourself hating Hayden Christiansen (damn what is the correct spelling of his name!? Can we just call him Anakin?) even more - which you think to yourself, that's not easy after what he did to us in Attack of the Clones.

But, there is an upside to all this disappointment. Remember that weird advertisement for a new movie starring Colin Ferrell that you saw going into Juno, but couldn't really figure out what it was about because you'd never seen a trailer, and the ad only told you it had something to do with beer and hitmen? Well apparently, it's good.