javascript overhead with jitter

I am making a basic networked video player and stuffing 90% of the code into javascript, since a lot of it is string parsing and keeping track of states. It seems that playing back a movie from a matrix array in javascript introduces about a 20% cpu overhead than if I were playing it back from a jit.qt.movie object in a patch. Nothing complicated going on, just playback. Here is the basic bang function (it's essentially taken from the javascript examples):

function bang()
{
    //todo: check for movie before processing bang
    if (vcount) {
        movArray[activeTrack].matrixcalc(outmatrix[activeTrack]/*null*/,outmatrix[activeTrack]);
        outlet(0,"jit_matrix",outmatrix[activeTrack].name);    
    } else {
        outlet(0,"jit_matrix",dummymatrix.name);    
    }
    if (vcount)
    {
        checkForEnd();
    }
}

Do I suck it up and deal? Would another language handle it better? Find a way to move the matrix array back into the main patch?

I'm authoring on a 1st gen macbook pro. This is eventually playing back on a 2Ghz mac mini with 2 GB RAM.

thanks.

sasha.