In fairness to the folks at the Disney Channel and this movie’s target audience, I’m stepping into the shoes of an 11-year-old girl for this review. Boy, these are tight.
Jump In! is totally a fun movie. It was a Disney Channel original, but now you can buy it on DVD to watch whenever you feel like it. The movie is about Izzy Daniels, a teenage boy played by Corbin Bleu, who was like, so cool in High School Musical. Izzy lives with his dad and his kid sister, and he likes to box. His dad loves…boxing even more, and since Izzy’s mom died his dad has been pushing him harder about boxing. It’s, like, all his dad talks about.
Izzy’s neighbor is Mary, played by Keke Palmer, the really good speller from Akeelah and the Bee. Mary is into double dutch, a jump-rope sport. When one of the girls on her double dutch team quits, like, right before the city championship, Mary asks Izzy to join, just to help out. Izzy says no way at first, but although he tries to hide it, inside he thinks double dutch is pretty cool. When Izzy agrees to join, he tries to keep it a secret, so none of the other boys make fun of him, especially the school bully, Rodney. Oh, and he doesn’t want his dad to find out either.
I don’t want to spoil the best parts, but I will tell you that Izzy learns to follow his own heart, even though it means being made fun of, or hurting his dad’s feelings. It’s a really inspirational, and I learned a lot.
Ok, so my favorite part is the double dutch. It rocks! I never knew jumping rope could be so cool, but now I’ve seen that it’s totally awesome. They do all kinds of crazy tricks, like flips and stuff, and I’m pretty sure Corbin and Keke did, like, most of their own stunts.
That’s my second favorite part, the actors. Corbin and Keke are the best, and so talented. They can sing, act and dance, and they’re really good at all of it. The music is super cool, because a lot of the songs are sung by Corbin and Keke, like Jumpin’.
If I had to say something bad about this movie, it would maybe be that the ending is a bit fake. I don’t want to say too much, but in the final double dutch competition, Izzy and Mary’s team gets to do a lot more than the other teams. They do a dance routine, and it’s really good but I don’t get how that’s part of the jump-rope competition. Oh, and I thought the movie was predictable, because I pretty much knew what was going to happen the whole time.
So Jump In! is, like, a really fun movie that even has good messages for the whole family. How’s the DVD?
Video
Jump In! is on one disc, and the format is full-screen, like it was on TV. It looks as good as some TV shows do on DVD. There are lots of fun colours, but the picture is sometimes soft. And I know it was full-screen on the Disney Channel, but I think widescreen would have been better for the double dutch parts, because then we could see the tricks better.
Audio
Audio is Dolby Digital 5.1, and the surround sound is pretty good. The movie is basically dialogue and lots of music, with a hopping soundtrack. You can hear the music on all of the speakers, not just the front, but I did think the music was a bit too loud for the dialogue in a few spots.
Audio is only in English, and closed captioning is available.
Special Features
Jump In! has a bunch of fun special features, but they don’t get into a lot of detail about how they made the movie. This is what we get:
- Learning the Moves Corbin Bleu teaches some of the moves of double dutch, with the help of a real double dutch instructor. Two of the girls from the movie’s jump-rope team join in. Pretty fun, but they don’t teach the best tricks. I guess that would take longer than five minutes.
- Inside the Ropes: The Making of Jump In! This one is a little longer, but not by much. It’s basically just a bunch of interviews with the actors and the people who made the movie, with some clips from the movie included.
- Jumpin’ Music Video This is a music video featuring Keke Palmer, who played Mary in the movie. The video is fun, and the music is good. It switches between Keke with some dancers and clips from the actual movie.
- Vertical Music Video You’ve probably heard of T-Squad, the young pop group. This is their video for the song in the movie. It doesn’t use movie clips, though. Still fun!
Final Thoughts
Jump In! is really fun. If you liked High School Musical, then you’ll probably love this movie too. I thought Disney did a good job with the DVD, so if you like good movies, you should buy it.
Special Features List
- Learning the Moves
- Inside the Ropes: The Making of Jump In!
- Jumpin’ Music Video
- Vertical Music Video
