HEy folks, Harry here... It is interesting to watch movies get reviewed at different times of the year. Capone had just come off passing a 2 ton clog of shredded glass called AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS, and turned around and saw JUMP TOMORROW and really dug it. Robie watches HEDWIG and the other Sundance flicks, and was unimpressed... Which is it? To each their own I always say....
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here with a look at a little gem of a movie that is slowly opening across the land as we speak. In John Robie’s Sundance review of JUMP TOMORROW, he knocked this movie a bit for being too stylized, too measured, and not particularly funny. I submit that how stylized and measured you like your films is a measure of taste, but more importantly, I wouldn’t call JUMP TOMORROW a comedy. Yes, it is very funny at times, but the movie is unabashedly a love story for people who can’t stand the Meg Ryan-Julia Roberts-style of what passes for love stories. It manages to be sweet and touching without falling into all of the familiar traps that that piece of shit AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS did.
JUMP TOMORROW is the first feature film from director Joel Hopkins, who also helmed the short film JORGE, on which this movie is based. Both films star a very unique newcomer named Tunde Adebimpe as George Abiola, perhaps the most painfully shy and spineless man in the world. This contrast strongly with his hulking appearance, which he hides behind ‘50s style horn-rimmed glasses and dull grey suits. He is clearly a man who has spent most of his life doing other people’s bidding. Although his now-dead parents are Nigerian, I think we’re supposed to surmise that George has lived most of his life in America (the accent that many of his relatives have is absent in George). Since he was very young, George has been part of an arranged marriage to a Nigerian woman he hasn’t seen in more than ten years. After accidentally showing up a day late to pick her up from the airport, George must make a journey from wherever he is starting out (I think New York) to Niagara falls, the love and suicide capital of the world, and the place where George will be married in three days. While at the airport, George runs into Alicia, played by the irresistible (and cuter than Penelope Cruz) Spanish actress Natalia Verbeke. He (and we) immediately falls for her.
George also bumps into a distressed Frenchman, Gerard (Hippolyte Girardot), who offers George a ride back home so he can prepare for his journey. George feels sorry for the recently dumped Gerard and invites him to a party where he knows Alicia will be. Unfortunately the party experience is a disaster when George meets Alicia’s British boyfriend, Nathan, and Gerard threatens to throw himself from the building’s roof in despair. The title of the film comes from George’s only words of comfort to Gerard. “Jump tomorrow. Things will look different then.” But soon, this advise is turned around on George just before he gets married.
Most of JUMP TOMORROW is a road movie. Gerard, grateful to George for saving his life, offers him a ride to Niagara. George knows that Alicia and Nathan are hitch-hiking in the same direction and seeks her out, hoping to gain the courage to do something. Just before they reach Niagara, the group reaches Alicia’s mother’s house, where a bit of good food and dancing set things into motion for most of the travelers.
What you’re not really getting about my description of JUMP TOMORROW is the wonderful way the film is put together. Every camera angle is carefully chosen to reveal an off-kilter look into George’s world. Every color on screen is perfectly selected in very Almodovarian manner. The score is strictly lounge and Muzak. All of these vivid qualities are in such sharp contrast to George’s demeanor, and we understand why he wants so desperately to be the kind of man Alicia might love. The clumsy yet charming dance the characters have on screen is wonderful. When Alicia’s mother gives George a red shirt to replace is ever present white shirt, he becomes a bold new man for a brief moment. Sure, there’s nothing particularly original about the tale being told in JUMP TOMORROW, but the out-of-sight performances, spectacular art direction, and overall tone of the film made it a real treat for me. It reminded me a lot of MY LIFE IN PINK. It finds the perfect balance of happy and sad, playful and mourning, innocence and sin, luminescent and drab. It manages to find harmony in its contrasts.
Twinkle toed,
Capone (EMAIL ME with the whens and wheres of my Canadian shipment!)
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