Rising star Kitty Zhang Yuqi, who made her movie debut in Stephen Chow's quirky comedy "CJ7" as the ordinary plain Jane school teacher, takes on a much bigger role playing the lead in "Jump", directed by Stephen Fung and produced by Stephen Chow. Going back in time, this hip hop dance flick was delayed for reshoots due to the heavily-publicised sex scandal outbreak of its male lead Edison Chen. Since then, Edison has been replaced by Leon Jay Williams who joins Kitty as she struts her moves on the dance floor.
Featuring a young village girl named Phoenix (Zhang), her father, a Kung Fu Master, constantly trains her in martial arts ever since she was child. However, her real passion has always been dancing. When an offer to work in the big city arrives, Phoenix leaps at the opportunity and leaves her hometown for Shanghai. She works at a garment factory by day and takes a part-time job at night at a local dance school, where she secretly learns the techniques and sparks a fairy tale love story with wealthy, handsome playboy Ron (Williams), who owns the dance school.
The opening scene kicks off to a promising start with an interesting musical number by three high pitched singing ladies in the field. Initially, it puts a smile on your face, but when it repeats occasionally throughout the show, it pushes over its limits of amusement. We see nothing new here in terms of storyline, but at least there's a brief moment of fresh air during the final dance-off between China and Korea's dance team. The dance sequence at the end by the Korean dancers will knock your socks off with creative movements involving a chair and a walking cane. Apparently, that was the only memorable scene from the movie. Moreover, it rarely has its laugh out loud moments, except during a pretty wild game of musical chairs and of a transvestite with an itchy boob.
Daniel Wu makes a special appearance as a plastic surgeon, while Stephen Fung manages to sneak in his own cameo with the transvestite. However, the ultimate question here is - can Kitty Zhang bust a move? Unfortunately, no. Stiff as wood, hip hop can never be her cup of tea. Frankly, Phoenix's passion seemed to be more towards singing and skipping around. So trying and get a good grasp of her true love for dance was tough to swallow. Meanwhile, the small-town girl behaviour is overdone with excessive maniacal laughter in almost everything she finds amusing, making you wish she had stayed put in her village.
"Jump" simply falls short of entertainment, making it seem more of a 'skip' than anything.
