Jump Tomorrow

A few years before JUMP TOMORROW was filmed, the same leading man (Tunde Adebimpe) starred in a shorter version of this script entitled "Jorge". I have not seen the original film, so I cannot base my review on it but I was so taken by JUMP TOMORROW that I'm going to try to find a copy of this 30 minute short.

Adebimpe very ably plays a Nigerian-American (George) who is a very odd man, indeed and I loved his low-key performance. In many ways he's a total geek and it's nice to finally see a Black nerd in a film who is NOT "Steve Urkel"! During most of the film, George is very quiet and shy--part of which is due to his introverted personality and part is due to his lack of enthusiasm for a pending arranged marriage. This film is about his trek from home to Niagra Falls to be wed.

Along the way, he meets up with a very strange man (Gerard) who is suicidal and desperately in need of a friend. While George is in a hurry to get to his wedding, he is too decent a man to leave Gerard in his emotional condition. So, they travel together cross country to the wedding and they both become very unlikely friends.

There's MUCH more to this movie that this--including a tough to believe but nice romance that occurs between George and a new lady--again, someone who seems so unlike George in almost every way. While this aspect of the film is a tad predictable, the performances and dialog are so fresh and unusual that the film held my interest throughout. As a result, I strongly recommend you see this romantic-comedy if you are looking for something different from the usual Hollywood offerings.

My first viewing of "Jump Tomorrow" was a rare instance when I knew I was going to love a film as soon as I saw the first shot, which depicts nothing more unusual than a bespectacled man being fitted into a suit. From the man's stiff posture and timid face it is obvious that he's very shy and passive. I immediately realized that I was seeing a good actor who was able to suggest an entire personality while hardly doing anything, indeed barely moving at all.

The name of the actor is Tunde Adebimpe, and I am astonished that he is not more famous. Apparently, this is one of the only films he's ever acted in, other than the short college film it's based on, in which he played the same character. Primarily, he's an animator rather than an actor. But the performance he gives in this film is nothing short of remarkable. And it is in the course of an extremely creative and quirky little movie that brings surprising life to an old formula.

The plot is simple: George, an American from a Nigerian immigrant family, is about to marry a childhood friend, and on the way to the wedding he falls for a Spanish woman, Alicia. If that premise sounds hopelessly familiar, the movie finds just about every possible way to make it seem fresh and original. While the beginning and end stick pretty closely to the conventions of the genre, the events in between manage to take some very interesting turns. The film is like one of those magical rooms that's much larger on the inside than on the outside.

When you hear the premise you might be led to assume, as I first did, that this is merely another ethnic comedy about someone who's expected to marry within the culture but ends up falling for someone of another ethnicity and at first the family objects, but eventually everyone comes around and learns a valuable lesson about cultural tolerance. While some of those films are enjoyable in their way, this patronizing approach is all too common in the movies, where the formula is always about whether some "exotic" culture is willing to adapt to Western norms that are inevitably deemed superior. Thankfully, "Jump Tomorrow" is not in that tradition at all. In fact, it deals surprisingly little with ethnicity, even though all the major characters are either non-white or non-American. By the middle of the film, you're likely to forget that it's even about an interracial relationship, because that point is never dwelt upon. George's family naturally expects him to marry the woman he grew up with, and the reason he's going along with their plans has nothing to do with some antiquated family betrothal custom: it is simply because he's such a passive and accepting individual.

Adebimpe plays the character to such perfection that some of the movie's laughs come simply from the nuances of his voice and gestures. His lines reflect an understanding of these subtle traits, as when he casually observes that "My face doesn't make sense without glasses." Comedy usually depends on frustrating a character's expectations, and "Jump Tomorrow" is no exception. I just don't believe I've ever seen in any other comedy a character quite like George, who wants nothing more than to blend in and be invisible, to avoid making waves. But he's inevitably humiliated in a hilarious sequence involving a woman named Heather Leather (the name still cracks me up), in an ill-advised scheme by his friend Gerard to make Alicia jealous. The event takes place at a hotel with a love motif and a variety of strange furniture, including a bathtub in the form of giant champagne glass. Without ever quite descending into surrealism, these scenes play like a tribute to several comic filmmakers from Blake Edwards to Woody Allen.

But George has a very basic dignity that grows on you as the film progresses. Gerard has his own problems, and indeed the movie's title refers to George's words when talking his friend out of suicide. Gerard calls it "the best talk-down speech I've ever heard," and I'd have to agree.

As in most romantic comedies, the rival love interest is a douche bag. But in "Jump Tomorrow," even this character is given so many quirky and eccentric traits that he seems an original creation. He's a British professor who practices taekwondo in the rain, gives Alicia an engagement ring made of bone, and refers to her family as "fascinating." We are tempted to wonder what she, a hopeless romantic, sees in him. That is a question we've all asked many times, both about movies and about real life.

At one point, Gerard gets into an argument with the professor over whether the French language is obsolete. This is one of many amusing scenes that deal with the theme of language differences. In an attempt to impress Alicia, George tries to learn Spanish by listening to travel audio-cassettes picked up at a local convenience store and by watching Spanish soap operas. Of course, he never gains more than a beginner's proficiency in the language, but in his fantasies he can speak the language fluently. The movie spoofs Spanish soaps in a handful of scenes in which he imagines himself as a character in one of these shows. Then there is Alicia's deaf-mute grandfather who takes an immediate liking to George, giving a wonderful performance without words and helping to highlight the movie's theme that commonality transcends language. "Jump Tomorrow" is a small masterpiece that I have made it my mission to make known to other movie lovers.

Jump Tomorrow is one of those smart and funny films you just can't help but like. A first time effort from writer/director Joel Hopkins , Jump Tomorrow is a fresh breath of air and an absolute relief from the bevy of re-hashed romantic comedies which find their way into theaters. At the center of Jump Tomorrow is George (portrayed by first time star Tunde Adebimpe), a very serious, composed, and all too contained Nigerian. At times George reminds me of Woody Allen or M. Hulot as he awkwardly stumbles through his life on a journey to the inevitable. But it's the journey that has an impact on George and watching that change is both humorous and entertaining.

Joel Hopkins has a lot of the same qualities as director Wes Anderson (who directed the fantabulous Rushmore) - he has a sense of framing, music and pacing that is funny, but not at the expense of the characters. Over the course of the movie you really get to know and like these characters, feel for their struggle and can revel in their personal triumphs. It's rare that you get that from a Romantic Comedy, and for that I'd definitely recommend Jump Tomorrow. Think of it as the perfect 'indie' date movie!

Well this film I think is more about sighing than laughing...

Saw the preview of this long ago, in a lifetime before kids, and back then thought that my wife and I would enjoy this film. Finally watched it recently and for me the film held up its part of the bargain.

I think some of the disappointment for this film is a bit heavy-handed for a very indie film from a first-time director. The film is somewhere between quaint and cute, and there is a time and place for that, no? The french version of Cupid was a bit trying on my nerves, but absolutely essential...and even he is given his epiphany, as are the male and female romantic interests, the initially wrongly-aimed arrows of love. They are both exotic on the outside, but all too familiar. It may be that the mute uncle says the most, but then less is often more.

Still, I think for many this film will have an appeal, as many people feel that they are on the wrong track of the wrong life at times. Having the male as the demure one also should have made this more appealing to my wife, but for some reason she did not get caught up in the film. I thought he was exceptionally well cast, and while he's probably nowhere near that awkward in real life, he certainly tapped into a neurosis as old as the Euphrates.

The Walter Mitty fantasies that George/Jorge uses for his form of losing himself worked less as comedy for me, but more as an underscoring of George's lack of ownership of his own life.

Many of the films loose ends were nicely tied together, and using Niagara Falls as the climactic setting, was a crucial cliché. Taking the plunge was well paralleled.

I see the next film from this director had him working with Dustin Hoffman, I'll check it out hopefully. But perhaps director/writer Joel Hopkins was not the indie wunderkind (or wunderBrit) I suspected. As mentioned in another review, he did license "Instant Karma" for a pivotal scene (and the words worked quite well I thought...).

Anyways that film looks like it touches on the despair and redemption of love too, so I'll try to entice my wife to watch that with me.

6.5/10 Thurston Hunger

I mean the story was simple, production was fine although the budget obviously wasn't in the 10s of millions of dollars and I never quite understood why George and Alicia liked each other so much. But despite all of that I sat in the theater very happy that I took a chance on this one. I think the spartan production made the whole thing seem more real, and since it seemed more real I wanted them to be happy... The characters were all very likeable too, like Gerard and Alicia's aunt. Finally, bonus points for not using subtitles (hey, I understood most of the Espanol!).