As I noted before, a chapter of my dissertation will be on Lonelygirl15 and currently I am doing research on the series. Not only the video number keeps increasing by the second, it seems, but each video has anywhere between 500-2000 comments on it; not to mention all the interaction that’s going on in the forums. So lately I’ve been feeling like I am trying to describe an elephant in the room. Except the elephant keeps morphing into a lion, then an eagle, then a fire spitting dragon, etc…

The last twist in the plot is that the movie Jumper decided to sponsor the current season of Lonelygirl15. The idea being that the plot of the new season will reflect that of the movie. Having read this news, I thought to myself, this should be interesting. A vlog that started with a teenage girl complaining about her parents, which then, turned into some kind of a fight against a mysterious cult called the Order which, by the way, is conducting tests on pregnant women to create trait positive girls as test subjects for a geneticist called Dr. Hart, will now start incorporating superhero themes, which basically means that we now will have all the Lonelygirl15 cast jumping left and right. Well, you get the idea. Pretty weird, huh? Only in the age of Internet is this possible. Needless to say, I will be following the season pretty closely and gauge the reaction of the audience in the forums.

Anyway, with that goal in mind, I went to see Jumper last night. Let me tell you upfront: I am a CGI slut. It doesn’t take much to entertain me when it comes to science fiction/comic-books-turned-into-film, and CGI. Like a raccoon enchanted with shiny objects, I am attracted to anything computer generated. It turns out, as I found out last night, that even I have my limits to my CGI sluttiness. I must admit, this was quite refreshing to find out. I actually have standards!!! As I came out from the movie with one of my good friends Peter who reviews films for WTIU, I kept thinking, why was I so disappointed?

The CGI was outstanding, the action was good, AnnaSophia Robb was hot, Samuel Jackson was… well, Samuel Jackson. The positives end there. The actual jumper was unfortunately played by Hayden Christenson, you know, the kid from the Star Wars prequels. He came off as half-baked actor then and it seems he hasn’t much improved since or he still needs find his role so-to-speak. But that wasn’t the only thing that was bothering me about the movie. The plot of the movie was this: there are some group of people who are able to jump from one location to the other and they are being hunted by another group because they are presumably dangerous. That’s it, that’s the whole plot. Why are these jumpers dangerous? Who are the hunters? What is the relationship of our jumper to his mother (who happens to be one of the hunters)? I have no idea… So I feel that there was much potential in the movie, so many avenues to be explored, but it seems like the script writer hadn’t done his/her homework. The narrative pretty much was lame. That was my main problem.

Coming out of the theater, I remembered a conversation I had several years back with another friend of mine who wrote his dissertation on special effects. After I complained about another disappointing movie I had recently seen, Bob told me that going to a disappointing movie is like going out on a bad date. Especially if you’re looking forward to seeing it. You get dolled up and ready for some action and you barely make it to the first base. Such a disappointment… I have a feeling the new season of Lonelygirl15 is going to leave be at the first base too. I can’t see a bunch of teenagers jumping around, seriously. Let’s get real here…