Sometimes, there’s a lot to be said for keeping it simple. As undemanding as Steven Gould’s 1992 novel JUMPER is, it’s certainly memorable. Picking it up five years after first reading it, details came flooding back with ease.

While watching director Doug Liman’s big-budget adaptation starring STAR WARS prequel vet Hayden Christensen, I was forgetting plot points minutes after they were introduced – its can’t-miss conceit complicated by a need to muddle something so straightforward.

Both tell the story of a young man – Davy in the book, David in the movie – who suddenly and inexplicably acquires the gift of teleportation. As Gould conceived it, Davy’s power allowed him to escape an abusive father and a would-be rapist trucker before getting the bright idea to “borrow” considerable cash sums from bank vaults.

From there, Davy eludes police and NSA questioning while also thwarting terrorist acts for the feds and romancing a headstrong college student named Millie (but only after he’s devirginized by another girl, perhaps prompting some of the controversy this young-adult novel has courted in its history). He performs a lot of jumping between New York and Oklahoma.

But the movie diverges considerably after the phrase “bank vaults.” Oh, there’s Millie, alright; she’s now a childhood crush grown up to be a clueless barmaid played by THE O.C.’s Rachel Bilson. Most of the book is condensed into 15 or 20 minutes, then Liman and company exercise free reign, with more visually appealing but less interesting results.

David is chased not by the cops, but by the Paladins, a shadowy organization for whom Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) – sporting white hair that makes him look like a Fisher-Price toy, not to mention a knife he uses to kill David’s kind – works. Yes, that’s right: David is not the only “jumper,” as he learns when he meets the cocky Brit named Griffin (Jamie Bell of BILLY ELLIOT).

Neither Roland nor Griffin appears as characters in Gould’s book, but they take center stage in the film. (Gould has, however, smartly taken advantage of the loads of exposure the movie will afford his work by writing an original tie-in called JUMPER: GRIFFIN’S STORY, which serves as that character’s origin, continuity be damned.)

The joy of Gould’s source material stems from its childlike view of an amazing power. With Davy greeting his newfound skills with equal guilt and glee, it’s not unreasonable to view it as a thinly veiled tale of hitting puberty and discovering the magic of erections.

Liman, a gifted filmmaker (SWINGERS, GO, THE BOURNE IDENTITY) reduces Davy’s story to a mere special effect. Although mildly diverting, there’s nothing all that innocent – or human – about it. –Rod Lott

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