February
13
Jumper's Liman: Crazy Like a Fox?
In keeping with the teleporting theme of Jumper, Twentieth Century Fox mounted elaborate press junkets for this hugely expensive movie in Cairo and Rome last week and finally premiered the pic on Feb. 11th in NYC. Here's the film's website and trailer.
An entertaining male fantasy picture--you haven't seen its like before-- Jumper will be hugely commercial, even though it's a mess and asks audiences to buy a wildly unbelievable plot premise. Here's Variety's review.
I remain fascinated by the enigma that is director Doug Liman. Some studio folks who have worked with him swear they will never repeat the experience (ask Frank Marshall, Stacey Snider or Marc Shmuger about working with Liman on The Bourne Identity). And the task of making Jumper, a movie already saddled with extraordinary continuity issues--it's like Buster Keaton's jump-cutting Sherlock Jr. on steroids--was not made easier by Liman's last-minute creative changes. Editors on the film were tearing their hair out.
Here's the New York Mag profile that attempts to explain the method behind Liman's madness. (See a selection from the piece on the jump.) And here's John Clark's interview on Premiere.com.
Or is Liman (son of the late famed Iran/Contra attorney Arthur Liman) crazy like a fox? The thing is, his movies are fun to watch partly because they keep surprising you. Given the free-spending insanity that is already a given on big-budget Hollywood movies, why not indulge a filmmaker who makes the movies a little less polished, predictable and formulaic? Both Bourne and Mr. and Mrs. Smith actually stand up to repeated viewings.
On the other hand if Liman's out-of-control, kid-in-the-playpen rep keeps dogging him, I'll be curious to see who will keep hiring him. Finally, as long as the movies keep working, he'll have no shortage of offers. Next up: he's directing Nicole Kidman as Valerie Plame.
[New York Magazine photo by Stefan Ruiz; Jumper premiere by Wireimage]
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