Jump Tomorrow (2001)

reviewed by
Jon Popick


Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"

© Copyright 2001 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.

Jump Tomorrow is cute with a capital C. Everything about it is cute, from the story, to the direction, to the sets, to the songs. If you can't walk away from this film with a smile on your face, you'd better keep right on walking to your shrink's office.

Tomorrow focuses on George Abiola (Tunde Adebimpe), a perpetually uncomfortable-looking Nigerian man who is about to marry a childhood friend. George, who looks like he came out of his mom wearing a suit, could be a grown-up Urkel on quaaludes. And to say he's nervous about his impending nuptials would be a drastic understatement.

With his traditional Nigerian wedding just a few days away (it's set to take place in Niagara Falls), George heads to the airport to pick up his fiancée, who is on her way from Nigeria. But he comes one day late, and, after calling his uncle (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), finds out Sophie (Abiola Wendy Abrams) is already in Niagara Falls.

George meets two strangers at the airport - a Latina beauty named Alicia (Natalia Verbeke) and a man named Gerard (two-time César Award nominee Hippolyte Girardot) who was dumped by his fiancée at the airport. George is instantly smitten with Alicia, who calls him Jorge and invites him to a party later that night, and, almost against his will, George becomes Gerard's co-pilot after he offers to drive the groom-to-be to Niagara Falls.

As chance would have it, Alicia and her smarmy Brit boyfriend Nathan (James Wilby) are hitching a ride to Canada, and most of Tomorrow shows Gerard trying to coerce George into following Alicia and winning her affections. Gerard, who George talks out of jumping off a building (convincing him to "jump tomorrow"), is kind of like a suicidal Cupid. Even his license plate reads "Amour 1." And then your basic road trip flick stuff ensues.

Tomorrow is a lot like Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise in more ways than just having three main characters and being predominantly set on Lake Erie. Paradise, like most of Jarmusch's other films, shows complete strangers of different nationalities, who would ordinarily have nothing to do with each other, forced into contact with one another for bizarre reasons. Granted, there's a lot more going on in Tomorrow than in Paradise, but the similarities are still there.

Tomorrow is a British film packed full of folks from a bunch of different countries. Writer/director Joel Hopkins based Tomorrow on an award-winning short (called Jorge) that featured Adebimpe playing the same character but in a different setting.

1:37 - PG for thematic material, mild sensuality and language

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