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EDITOR'S PICK
`Jack
the Giant Slayer` - humdrum drama
Rating:
*1/2
Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum! This one is no fun!
Grafted from the classic, "Jack and the Beanstalk" children`s fantasy,
this one is a soul-less fantasy-action-adventure that`s neither captivating nor
convincing.
It was long, long ago, in the kingdom of Cloister, there lived a disgruntled
Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) and a happy-go-lucky orphan named Jack
(Nicholas Hoult). Their paths first cross in a market place, where Jack shields
the Princess from undesirable elements.
Soon, due to financial constraints, Jack is again at the market to sell his
horse. But instead of selling the horse, he is forced to barter his horse with
beans by a desperate monk, who needs the horse to escape the King`s soldiers.
Unknown to Jack, these beans are the magical giant beanstalk that sprout when
they get wet.
Destiny leads Princess Isabelle to Jack`s home on a rainy night at which point
those magic beans sprouts volcanically skywards, taking along with it, the house
and the princess up, up, up into the clouds, toward Gantua, home of a race of
giants led by the two-headed Fallon (Bill Nighy).
In the meanwhile, Isabelle`s father, King Brahmwell (Ian McShane) is out
searching for his daughter. Seeing the giant beanstalk and his daughter`s
bracelet with Jack near it, he deploys his trusted staff including Elmont (Ewan
McGregor), Wicke (Ewan Bremner), and Roderick (Stanley Tucci), who is Isabelle`s
shifty fiance, to make the skyward journey to rescue the Princess. Jack too
joins the motley group, mostly because the script demands it.
What follows is a lame variant on exploring Skull Island, with Elmont as the
very, very heroic knight in charge. An evil schemer betrays everybody, uses an
ancient relic to control the giants and then gets them to invade the human
kingdom below. Before it`s all over, the giants have found a way down to Earth
and threaten to take over once and for all, and the end is obvious as the title
suggest it.
Hoult and Tomlinson are appealing actors who match up well. They are capable of
much more than what they have delivered. It is only Tucci as the scheming
villain and McGregor as the large-hearted and commanding knight, who bring life
to their performance. Bill Nighy as the freaky two-headed leader of the giants,
exults some pronounced voice work worth mentioning. But honestly none of the
performances are outstanding or have moments to shine. The characters are often
left delivering dumb, obsolete dialogues that falls painfully flat.
On the whole, one barely cares about most of the live characters, let alone the
computer generated ones. The giants are cartoonish and not at all menacing to
look at. Except for the two-headed leader and a few others, the giants didn`t
have any intimidating characteristics making it difficult to accept as
threatening.
Also the film is unnecessarily in 3D as the effects are so inconspicuous. It
seems as if the 3D effects were used as an after thought.
Singer remains a competent filmmaker - there are no extraordinarily incoherent
scenes and everything cuts together - but there`s no spirit here. The film is
bookended by an unwanted, laboured culmination and your archetypal,
board-setting prologue, which overemphasizes the intertwined fates of Jack and
Isabelle. And the plot is mostly an excuse for outsized action set pieces.
As for the production values, Gavin Bocquet`s production design is good but the
computer generated images used are not up to the mark. Joanna Johnston`s
costumes could pass off as contemporary clothing. Newton Thomas Sigela`s
cinematography is bright and vivid.
The script written by quartet, Christopher McQuarrie, Darren Lemke, Dan Studney
and Singer himself, seems flawed. It is a shameless mixture of restricted
unoriginality, crammed with muffled one-liners and drained dry of emotional
investment.
Watch it if you have nothing better to do.