“Jumper” starts out with perhaps the most annoying voice-over in the history of film, with Hayden Christensen smugly listing his day’s activities: hanging out in Rio, having lunch atop the Sphinx in Egypt, surfing in some tropical locale and so on, all before retiring to his New York apartment that evening. It’s an innocuous list, but Christensen delivers it in such a thoroughly unlikable manner that it’s hard not to hate “Jumper” immediately. The rest of the film presents a similar challenge—lobbying hard for you not necessarily to like the film, but to not hate it as much as you should. “Jumper” is a superhero movie for the unimaginative, with a half-assed plot, unlikable characters and lackluster special effects.

Christensen stars as David, who discovers at the age of 15 that he can teleport anywhere at will. His first “jump,” as he calls it, happens after he falls through some ice into a frozen river. David suddenly finds himself in the Ann Arbor Public Library, soaking wet and with no idea how he got there. It’s not long before David gets the hang of his abilities, though, and sets out on his own, leaving behind his abusive dad and Millie (Rachel Bilson), his childhood sweetheart. The story picks up eight years later: David has used his fantastic powers to rob banks, travel the world and set up a swank apartment in New York. But hot on his trail is Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), a leader of a secret society that hunts “jumpers.” After a confrontation with Roland, David jumps back to his hometown and meets up with Millie. But Roland and another jumper named Griffin (Jamie Bell) are close behind.

The main problem with “Jumper” is Christensen, an actor who continues to get roles despite being consistently flat, whiny and generally annoying in just about every movie he makes. If you’re going to have a superhero movie—and “Jumper” is, more than anything, a superhero movie—it helps if the lead character is likable, if not sympathetic. Christensen makes David seem like an all-around jerk, though, and there’s never any point in the movie where the character’s actions move beyond his own self-interest. This selfishness is referenced early in the movie, when David watches a news report about some people trapped by flooding, with the newscaster lamenting that it would take a miracle for someone to reach the trapped victims. David shrugs, changes the channel and teleports to his fridge for a snack. The script, adapted by David Goyer, Simon Kinberg and Jim Uhls, never really gets much more heroic than that.

The rest of the characters are similarly unsympathetic. Diane Lane and Michael Rooker, as David’s absent mother and alcoholic father, respectively, are about as one-note as you can get. As the film’s villain, Samuel L. Jackson provides his standard level of bad-assery, though he does little more than growl and shout about how David and his fellow jumpers are an abomination unto God. In genre fare like this, Jackson can usually be counted on to give it his all, no matter how campy the material, but in “Jumper,” he’s phoning it in.

Of course, the script doesn’t give anyone—from director Doug Liman on down to the rest of the cast—much to work with. Building a film around a character that has the power to teleport anywhere with no ill effects, you’d think Goyer, Kinberg and Uhls would have come up with something more imaginative than robbing some banks and eating a sub while lounging in a deck chair on top of the Sphinx. The mythology that makes up the movie’s back story—about Roland and his shadowy group waging a centuries-long war against jumpers—is half-baked and nonsensical and raises more questions than it answers. And don’t even think about bringing up the physics behind teleporting.

The action scenes, at least, are pretty good, which is the only saving grace for “Jumper.” Doug Liman, now known better for action flicks like “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “The Bourne Identity” than his earlier indie flicks like “Swingers” and “Go,” is capable when it comes to capturing kinetic fight scenes. The film’s climax has some decent moments, with David and Griffin using their jumping abilities in interesting, if not very surprising, ways. There’s some genuine tension and excitement in those few fleeting moments, and it’s a shame that the rest of the movie isn’t infused with that sort of energy. For some superheroes, great power may come with great responsibility, but in “Jumper,” great power comes with great lameness.