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Rating: Whoopi Goldberg knows no half measures: she either makes us all laugh out loud (Sister Act), or she "dives" into particularly serious contexts filled with that dramatic-melancholic aura, as seen in the famous The Color Purple.
In this (almost) forgotten blockbuster of pure Eighties craftsmanship, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Whoopi alias Terry Doolittle plays a very bored bank employee, pseudo-alternative and nonconformist, always at odds with her boss, surrounded by questionable gadgets, giant toothbrushes, and domestic cockroaches. Extremely funny and entertaining, yet alone and without a satisfying and comforting social/love life, Terry is inadvertently drawn into a serious espionage affair with a cold war-like nature, an event that will irreversibly change her insignificant existence as a hapless New Yorker.
On a cold and monotonous morning like many others in wintery Big Apple, Terry is intercepted via PC by a mysterious identity presenting itself with the nickname Jumpin' Jack Flash (shortened to Jack by the protagonist), a sort of mockery of a famous Stones song (a band Terry is crazy about). The strange virtual individual urgently asks for help, but reveals very little about his life and the reason for such an emergency, proposing a series of riddles, puzzles, and codes to the employee that, although not inclined to such setups, involve her in a one-way adventure within the context of high New York society and international diplomacy, realms that are light-years away from her small-bourgeois world. And very soon, Terry will find herself dealing with bellicose CIA-KGB espionage and will finally understand the essence of the "mission" set for her, namely the rescue of Jack, a British spy trapped in the Soviet-style Eastern Europe.
Twists, mysteries, darkness, some murders, and some disappearances and kidnappings will frighten (and not a little) the poor employee who will nevertheless manage to thwart the plans of a New York KGB cell, repatriate Jack, and establish a sort of romantic relationship with the ex-spy.
The film, although it does not possess the “epic” qualities of other feature films where she stars, is a highly enjoyable action movie with a strong humorous flavor. Simple, bubbly, immediate, and engaging, Jumpin' Jack Flash quickly catapults us into the multifaceted and multicolored reality of the Eighties Yankees, where the rich ethnic melting pot, as well as the dynamism and the immense plurality of art, music, fashion, and underground accessories, clash with the equally substantial catalog of neglects such as the decline of pre-70s capitalism, the last rounds with the Soviet giant, and the violent rebellion of the middle-lower classes and social outcasts. Terry Doolittle paradoxically embodies half and half of such characteristics: anti-capitalist and bank employee, alternative and winking at the hip-hop slang underground slums, yet bored, unsociable, and locked in a shabby apartment. Indeed, it is our protagonist who materializes, albeit in a somewhat botched and makeshift manner, the lucid genuineness of the nostalgic '80s, particularly of the "legendary" clash between the sinister capitalism of "suited" elites and the flourishing nonconformism of the youth component estranged from the rigid social rules dictated by consumerism and the sparkle of banknotes.
Autumn has arrived, the cold begins to prick our post-beach bodies. A good blockbuster like Jumpin' Jack Flash, far from contemporary aberrations, and a great personality like Whoopi Goldberg are capable of warming cold bodies and saddened souls.
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