Before TV On The Radio, Tunde Adebimpe played a smitten geek in a delightful rom-com
Film Features Tunde Adebimpe
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. Because it’s Love Week at The A.V. Club, we’re recommending movies about love triangles.
Jump Tomorrow (2001)
Based on a short British filmmaker Joel Hopkins made while attending New York University’s Tisch School Of The Arts in the late ’90s (you can watch it here and here), Jump Tomorrow is a delightful, multicultural morsel of a rom-com. Hopkins has admitted to being influenced by Jim Jarmusch and Jacques Tati, but that’s far from the only inspiration on display in this vivid, picturesque hipster romp, which also appears to bite from Jacques Demy, color-era Jean-Luc Godard, and other big names of the French New Wave.
Alternately titled Life: A User’s Manual, the film follows shy Nigerian-American George (Tunde Adebimpe), who meets and becomes instantly smitten with the lovely Alicia (Natalia Verbeke). Unfortunately, he’s in the midst of preparing for his arranged marriage to a childhood friend. (Look for Amy Sedaris as a dance partner George practices with for the reception and a young-ish Isiah Whitlock Jr. as his uncle, one of the family members doing the arranging.) George also meets Gerard (Hippolyte Girardot), a French romantic recently dumped by his girlfriend. At one point, our bespectacled hero keeps this heartbroken guy from jumping off of a roof by uttering the eponymous words of advice.
Next thing you know, George and Gerard are on a road trip to get to the church on time (as David Bowie would say) for the former’s wedding. This wild ride includes a pit stop at a honeymoon spot called The Love Lounge. Along the way, the two also pick up a hitchhiking Alicia and her pedantic British boyfriend (James Wilby), en route to Canada. Since George is getting married only to appease his family, the question becomes less who he will choose than who Alicia will. Technically, this is a love quadrangle.
Hopkins found his leading man in fellow NYU classmate Adebimpe, a straight-faced fellow who would eventually be known as leader of the critically acclaimed indie-rock group TV On The Radio. The frontman has appeared in a few other movies since, including as another soft-spoken husband-to-be in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. Hopkins, meanwhile, has had a scattershot filmography since Jump, which quietly slipped into theaters a few months before 9/11. (He also directed Last Chance Harvey, the 2008 rom-com with Dustin Hoffman as a middle-aged divorceé who finds love in London with Emma Thompson.)
Beyond its more screwball pleasures, Jump remains a refreshing reminder that Black people aren’t a monolith. They can be awkward, apprehensive, nerdy, goofy, and bereft of swag. As much as George wishes he could be as smooth and passionate as the characters in the telenovelas he starts watching after meeting Alicia, he knows he’s still a geeky-ass dude at heart. Sometimes, though, geeky-ass dudes can get the girl, too.
Availability: Jump Tomorrow is available to rent or purchase from Amazon.
13 Comments
TV on the Radio is the American Radiohead. Thoughts?
would that make blackeyed peas the american coldplay?
BEP play a sound older than 90s U2.
They’re way better than that. I saw them live a few years ago and it was one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time. Both the band and the audience were having a blast through the whole thing.
They’re a band that’s inspired by Radiohead but are also both of their own niche and don’t have quite the cultural impact of Radiohead. So no. They aren’t.
I had the unfortunate experience of listening to their demo album “Ok Calculator” before being properly exposed to their studio stuff, not realizing it’s whole deal as, you know, not meant for actual release. So now, no matter how much I enjoy their awesome, dynamic, “real” sound, I’ll always miss the band I though they were initially, with lo-fi textured vocals standing in for multiple instrument tracks and truly bizarre lyrics. I wish they could be both those bands at once.
“Jump Tomorrow” is a great movie. Saw it in the theater when it came out. Feels like a foreign film even though it was mostly filmed in upstate NY. The party scene where Alicia mentions her boyfriend and all George hears after that is a buzzer as her lips move is hilarious.
I remember when I first saw a video of TV on the Radio and I said to someone in the room that the singer looked like the guy who played George in Jump Tomorrow – they said I was a racist.
I’d totally forgotten Jump Tomorrow. It’s quite a good film.Geez 20 years fly by really fast.
I’ve never actually seen Jump Tomorrow, but I loved loved LOVED the short film that it’s based on. Seen it a dozen times, it used to be shown on Channel 4 late at night every now and again back in the 90s. One of those feel good films that always had me smiling away by the end of it. I guess it really is about time I checked out the full length movie!I always wondered why Tunde Adebimpe didn’t become more of a household name. (Now I think about it, he would have made a good Chidi in The Good Place, if William Jackson Harper were not already a person that exists!). Aside from that short, have only ever seen him in that Rachel Getting Married movie, plus he was in one of the instalments of The Girlfriend Experience (which I think I liked more for the music and the cinematography than the actually storyline …) where I reckon he was woefully miscast.Spoilers (for, like, the whole plot!):
“Jump Tomorrow is available to rent or purchase from .”WHERE?
I remember seeing this years ago and really enjoyed how low-key it is. Adebimpe does such a good job as an awkward regular guy linked up with the more outgoing Frenchman and making the story work. Really enjoyed this and should revisit it.
“a young Isiah Whitlock Jr.”Young? He was 47 when this movie came out.
I saw Adebimpe in an episode of the new Perry Mason last year. I was surprised, but then a search turned up that he’s actually been in a lot of recognizable things. Good for him. He has a strong screen presence.
I keep meaning to check out more TV on the Radio, but I never remember to. Wolf Like Me is still a banger though.