If you’ve ever stood in November sleet waiting for a late bus, or tried to kill those two extra hours at the airport, or sat stuck in traffic on a holiday weekend, you’ve had the fantasy: Wouldn’t it be great to be able to teleport yourself instantly anywhere in the world? Movies offer us vicarious wish fulfillment, and Jumper starts out terrifically. David Rice (Hayden Christensen), a 15-year-old boy with more than the usual set of problems that come with his age, discovers that he has the power of teleportation. He doesn’t understand it, but he learns to use it, in ways that tweak our own imaginations of what we would do with such a gift. He leaves his unhappy home, robs a bank (leaving an IOU) and starts to explore the world, going wherever a passing whim takes him, developing self-confidence and strength along the way.

So far so good. There are a lot of interesting places Jumper might go from here: Aside from the things we would do in David’s place, we wonder if the story might look at the effect of such limitless ability on a young man, and what would happen when he becomes jaded. Instead, and this may not be news to those of you familiar with the young adult books on which Jumper was based, we’re in superhero territory. David learns that he is part of an ancient race with this power, and that he has enemies, a society called the Paladins, who seeks to uncover and kill all jumpers for exercising an ability only God should enjoy.

Jumper is designed as the first film in a series. It’s directed by Doug Liman (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) with an emphasis an whiz-bang special effects, and it’s cool for awhile to watch our hero moving at will from surfing in Australia to picking up models at London bars to enjoying lunch on the head of the Sphinx. (It’s like an amped-up version of the globe-hopping in the Bourne movies, which Liman produced.) But aside from the eye candy, it’s an unsatisfying beginning. The film’s production notes, the material reviewers are given to provide background, explain a lot of stuff that isn’t actually in the movie: that David is a hero in the making, that the Paladins (represented primarily by a white-headed Samuel L. Jackson) are motivated not by religious fanaticism but a history of jumpers who have used their powers for evil. If Jumper were the first episode of a SciFi Channel series, it would probably hook me for the upcoming weeks. But as a movie, where the next episode will be at least a year away, this fails to stand on its own.