Ever wish that you could be sitting in your desk, listening to your professor drone on and on about the Great Pyramid and then suddenly transport yourself to the actual Great Pyramid? Then the movie “Jumper” is something that you’d thoroughly enjoy.

“Jumper” is the story of a 23-year-old guy, David Rice (Hayden Christensen), who can teleport, or “jump” himself to anywhere in the world as long as he can actually see his location, whether it be with his own eyes, from a memory or by looking at a picture of where he wants to go. The movie begins when David learns at the age of 15 that he can jump during a life or death situation. Once he learns that he has the ability to jump, he sees it as a way out of his crummy life (he is bullied at school and has an abusive father) and so he says goodbye to his high school crush and gets the heck out of there.

Soon he starts living it up, learning how to rob banks with his newly found power, which helps him get the funds to live in a pretty nice pad in New York City and have all the gadgets you could ever want. Basically he starts living a responsibility and consequence-free life. That is, until he is found out by Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), a Paladin, which is basically the title for a person that seeks out “Jumpers” and kills them because Jumpers are nothing but trouble. Along the way, David manages to wreck another Jumper’s life (Jamie Bell) and drag in his high school crush Millie (Rachel Bilson) through the ringer and puts her life in jeopardy, but it all ends happily.

Go see this movie if you are easily amused and enjoy a lot of fast-paced action, because it is very similar to “Bourne Identity,” probably because it was made by the same people. Also, see it if major plot holes and lack of character development don’t bother you. The biggest problem with this movie is that the concept of being able to teleport yourself anywhere just by being able to visualize it well has already been done in “X-Men 2,” through the character Nightcrawler. If the story had been developed well enough to make something really good and fulfilling happen with this ability to jump, ripping something off from X-Men wouldn’t have been a big deal.

Also, the characters weren’t developed well enough to make you give a hoot about whether or not they live or die. There was lack of dialogue and story development, enough so where it was hard to pick out what the actual plot was, leaving the characters to be very bland and uninteresting. Another big problem is that in a lot of movies, the protagonist has enough of a moral compass to maybe muck around for awhile and be a wild child with their new powers, but then realize that there is a greater purpose and that their powers should be channeled in a good direction, like in “X-Men” or “Spiderman.” Not so much here.

The movie has a lot of great action scenes and stunning locations, but it can be classified as a renter.

Stephanie Samsel can be reached at [email protected]