The other night, in order to test out the quality of my sister's new TV (which was pretty cool, although apparently our MacBook adapter is just SLIGHTLY different from the adapter needed to plug in to the TV - argh), we watched Jumper (2008, Hayden Christensen & Rachel Bilson) - figuring that an action movie would be best to try out the exciting new wide screen, having failed to be able to watch the movies we WANTED to watch, which were on my MacBook and unpluggable. WELL. Was THAT ever a big mistake!
Now, this movie had been on my watch list for a while, because the books (Jumper, Reflex, Griffin's Story) by Stephen Gould are AWESOME. So go read the books, because they're great. Griffin's Story is technically a bit of a movie-tie-in, because Griffin is a character from the movie, and is not in the original Jumper book, but I read it without having seen the movie, and it was just a good read. The books are way, way, WAY better than the movie. Apparently the author had something to do with the movie script itself, but he must not have had much say or else he should stick to his novel-writing gig, 'cause it stunk.
Fair enough, the main actors were terrible. I hate Hayden Christensen a whole lot. I think he couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. And Rachel Bilson should never have gone on to movies from her stupid OC role. They were just awful. But even Griffin - whose bad lines ought to have been saved by his cute Irish accent - was becoming completely intolerable after a few scenes. They even had Diane Lane - someone I *usually* like to watch in movies - and made her suck. Samuel L Jackson was playing... well... his I-am-the-villain-but-I'm-still-Samuel-L-Jackson role. But his lines were terrible and the premise of his character (basically a religious fanatic "YOU ARE AN ABOMINATION" and stuff) was godawful.
Verdict: DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY ON THIS MOVIE!!! Seriously, it was terrible, terrible, terrible - even the action scenes couldn't save it. GO READ THE BOOKS they are so much better.
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2 comments:
Hi! I'm in your internet, reading your blog. :)
For ease of reading, would you consider including the title of the book/movie reviewed in the title of the post? I totally expect I'll be referencing back to things in there (you keep up with media better than I do - although I saw Jumper a long time ago, and apparently don't remember anything except that guy's accent), and titles would make it easier. :)
Good point, Susan.
Also wanted to mention that it was totally Jumper that made my new tv seem less than perfect (with the lagging audio and wrong aspect ratio). =D I watched Harry Potter (the first) as something pretty to test it out with yesterday, and it was marvelous. Also weird, it's been ages since I saw all those actors so young.
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