A Reel Review: JACK THE GIANT SLAYER

 

JACK THE GIANT SLAYER is director Bryan Singer’s take on the classic Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale. It is saturated in fairy tale lore with familiar characters, settings and themes, and brought to life with tons upon tons of CGI. On principle, there is not much wrong with a re-telling of an old story as long as you can keep it fresh and feeling new.

Jack (Nicholas Hoult) comes into the possession of magic beans which sprout a beanstalk which leads to a kingdom populated by man-eating Giants. Jack accidently gets wrapped up in the dealings of Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson), who is running away from her father the King (Ian McShane). Jack must rescue the princess from the clutches of the Giants with the help of a knight, Elmont (Ewan McGregor) and Isabelle’s suitor, Roderick (Stanley Tucci).

JACK THE GIANT SLAYER is chock-full of every cliché character and theme ever written into a fairy tale; heroic day-dreaming farm-boys, a princess, a knight, a king, a magical land and a whole bunch of monsters. Unfortunately for this adventure, Bryan Singer never takes one single them and takes it past its face-value; there is nothing personal added, no new feelings or anything daring. It quickly becomes unbearably bland, and even if you were completely unfamiliar with the retreading, the film never engages you in a single character. It doesn’t take long to realize that JACK isn’t a whole lot of fun.

The CGI characters, in particular the Giants, fall with a gigantic thud. The Giants are lifeless and cartoony, and never once feel scary. Worse, they are portrayed as less of a threat and more like a bunch of lumbering dumbasses…and not very funny ones either. With a movie full of bland heroes, having a gaggle of bland villains just swirls up the shitter.

Acting is atrocious throughout. No one shows any energy or chemistry with each other, never shows any convincing fear, or gives a hint that they are having fun. Bryan Singer deserves extra demerits for sucking all the charisma out of Ewan McGregor. Bill Nighy turns in some decent voice-work as one of the leading Giants, but he is sadly under-used.

The ending tries for a clever, modern-day twist on things in an attempt to find some validation to the film and to push the power of storytelling angle a bit more. It works to an extent, but by that time it’s way too goddamn late. It’s absolutely mind-boggling how a film loaded with fantasy themes and characters set amongst giant spectacle can be so bland and boring.

BOTTOM LINE: Fuck it