From the first moment I witnessed a preview, I knew that Jumper was just a compilation of cutting room floor X-Men footage. The idea of being able to teleport to anyplace in the world is certainly awesome, but this alone cannot carry an entire film. Clearly screen “writer” David S. Goyer, and director Doug Liman do not share in this sentiment. For eighty-eight minutes they try desperately to convince the audience that teleporting is all you need.

Sure, spend the first fifteen minutes showing me how a jumper acquires cash and cool shit, but then you have to show me why I should continue watching for another hour and a half. Hayden Christiansen, forgetting his acting skills back at the Shattered Glass set, zips through this font of nothingness as young jumper David Rice, an adolescent who becomes aware of his gift while trying to retrieve a snow globe on an ice-covered lake. Because there was just no other way.

The annoyance of watching Christiansen and token girlfriend Rachel Bilson mug at each other does not distract from the fact that there is simply no purpose to the film. It often feels like a point is trying to manifest, but suddenly the film recoils as if it needs to save it all for a sequel already in the works. We know what a jumper is, but there is no real discussion about why they exist. What Goyer doles out as explanation are catchphrases from Roland, a major player in a fundamentalist religious group that’s been mercilessly picking off jumpers since the Middle Ages. Roland, played by a ridiculously white-haired Samuel L. Jackson, refers to jumpers as “abominations” and explains, “Only God should have this power.” That’s all you get on that subject. Diane Lane phones it in as David’s mother, whom we know abandoned him and his father when David was five. When it’s revealed, shockingly, that she is a part of the Super Christians (Paladins is the preferred nomenclature) no one really questions why she had the presence of mind to leave her son in order to save him, but fell short on the end of realizing that maybe traipsing around the world slaughtering other youths was perhaps a bit hypocritical and deranged.

The laziness of Goyer’s script, which was minimally doctored by at least two other screen writers, is clearly a ball of crap created to facilitate the exhibition of rapidly unimpressive special effects showcasing whiny manic depressives teleporting to world monuments like the top of the Sphinx, where they can sunbathe next to their surfboard. The film Jumper is allegedly based on a book of the same name. I’m going to venture to guess it’s nothing like this amalgamut of lazy crap. My heart goes out to fans of the novel.