Jack The Giant Slayer Review

[Westside Steve]

Jack the Giant Slayer

Warner Brothers

PG 13 114 min

Hi gang.

I'll bet we all know the story of JACK THE GIANT SLAYER, or Jack and the Beanstalk as it's often called, but haven't heard it in many years.

I do remember that it was a fairly simple story therefore direct or Bryan Singer needed to come up with a few extra elements, first to pad the runtime second to make it more relevant to film fans. Yes we know that young and naive Jack (Nicholas Hoult) has been sent to town to sell the horse as I recall, and is seemingly swindled into swapping the beast for a handful of magic beans.

Those enchanted legumes will soon grow into a beanstalk that reaches a fortress inhabited by a wicked giant guarding his hoard of plundered treasure.

Well, in this version there are thousands of terrible giants trapped upon this chunk of floating real estate by the legendary King Eric who just happened to have a magic crown which bestows the power to rule the big guys. That crown, and the rest of the beans, have been hidden away for eons.

Our villain, Roderick, (Stanley Tucci) who is about to marry the princess (much to her chagrin) has stolen these artifacts and is planning to use them too rule the world.

Personally I think ruling the world would be a pain in the ass but it seems everybody wants to.

So the princess runs off and eventually she, Jack, Roderick and a bunch of the Kings generic medieval guardsman wind up in giantville.

In my opinion this film suffers most from a dearth of charisma.

Our antagonist, Roderick, isn't really very frightening, actually he's mostly just an asshole. The Giants themselves are certainly ugly and mean enough but they are mostly designed to appeal to teenage and younger boys who are more prone to appreciate the gross out factor.

Also, and I don't know why, but Nicholas Hoult's oddly shaped head bothered me throughout the film.

Didn’t these guys have a hairdresser on staff?

 

So not only was this film less than exciting and not very suspenseful or clever the effects, which appear to be one of the major selling cards, were less than spectacular especially by today's standards.

It isn’t terrible but might possibly be more fun for older children.

I’m bailing with a C.

WSS