Mystery DVD Club No 21: Jump Cut

Mark Oakley

It looks like a decorator has accidentally blown woodchips on the camera lens and nobody realised before it was too late

The Mystery DVD Club has had its fair share of duffers lately. Can this one buck the trend?

Published on Oct 6, 2009

Welcome to Mystery DVD Club. We sent a writer a bargain basement DVD that they know nothing about. They watch it. We hope they uncover a gem in the process. Jump Cut, sadly, has brought our batting average even further down...

A film is utter tosh if it takes you at least three separate sittings to get through it. Jump Cut took me five. I've actually had the DVD for the best part of a month but it's so ghastly that I could barely get through 15 minutes before having to switch it off to save my eyes from the strain of having to watch this appalling acted, poorly directed and just plain awful film.

I understand why it was posted to me. Jump Cut is a film about independent filmmaking and I have dabbled in that area myself, albeit on a much smaller scale (we're talking small productions, both in terms of scope and length, for fun with the help of a few friends). I was initially intrigued about the idea of watching a film made for and by independent filmmakers in the vein hope that it would perhaps inspire me into exploring larger productions myself.

Within five minutes that intrigue had turned into boredom. If this is what the industry is really like then all the film has managed to do is distance me from the Hollywood dream further than ever before.

The film at least has some ambition. Made in 1993, techniques such as breaking the fourth wall and director Lawrence Gardner speaking to the audience about his own character in the film (also a budding director - you see what they've done there?) are overused and swiftly found out as nothing more than a gimmick rather than a plot device. Plus when your main actors have so little charm then it's very, very annoying.

The film is described on the packing as "a light-hearted, fast-moving comedy about three frustrated characters... These characters form a motion picture production company and attempt to produce a feature film". It also goes on to proclaim that "the stage is set for many extraordinarily funny situations as they attempt to cope with all the seen and unforeseen elements that influence the success or failure of an average day of film-making".

Reading that back now I think that I might have to report the disc packaging to Trading Standards. The only word in there that rings true is "frustrated" but it's more to do with your state of mind than the characters on screen. For there are no funny situations and it certainly isn't fast moving - scenes of dialogue go on for far too long and the plot simply doesn't go anywhere for vast swathes of time.

I mentioned eyestrain earlier in this piece and one of the reasons for that is the truly awful quality of the film stock used. Grainy doesn't begin to describe it. It looks like a decorator has accidentally blown woodchips on the camera lens and nobody realised before it was too late. My ears were put through an ordeal, too, with an audio track that sounds direct from the 70s or 60s. The attempts at original song making at least raise a few laughs, though, albeit unintentionally. When you've heard a Casio keyboard and a bunch of people singing 'Babadoobap, babadoobabbadoobah' over the top, incessantly, you have just heard what Hell must sound like.

The acting throughout is beyond crap. Jack Black-lite Peter Petty is like a kid in a playground acting out scenes with his mates and bringing nothing more to the screen than an impressively hairy face. Gardner is far too smug for his own good considering his own serious acting limitations and only Roy Conrad offers any semblance of having a modicum of talent.

I do admire what those concerned have attempted to achieve here, having dabbled in my own movie-making escapades myself, but I can honestly say that as poor as my version of King Kong is and as amateurish as Tremors In Eight Minutes appears, they score over this effort in one main respect: they are a damn sight shorter.

Jump Cut is bobbins. Is it the worst film ever made? I couldn't possibly say. Is it the worst film I've ever seen? Absolutely.