Plot
Jack (Nicholas Hoult) is a lowly farmboy desperate for adventure. On a fateful trip to the city of Cloister, he acquires a satchel of beans in a mixed up exchange for his horse, unknowing that they are the fabled magic MacGuffins that once led to war between humans and giants from a mythological sky continent. During a storm, runaway princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) finds herself holed up at Jack’s shack as a bean is triggered by the rainfall, erupting into a monstrous beanstalk that whisks her off to the land of the giants. Risking life and limb (literally), Jack and a squad of the king’s finest men set off to rescue the princess and hopefully avert a second war.
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| A night out in Wales. |
Review
Another week, another jazzed up fairytale. Bigger, brighter and sexier: Jack the Giant Slayer is the newest offering squeezed from Hollywood's favourite cash cow: the contemporary fable.
It's difficult to not feel thoroughly cynical when reviewing a film like Jack; it's an entirely disingenuous production, its $195 million dollar budget purposed solely and entirely for making money. Not surprising in a money-minded industry perhaps, but when so many near carbon copy films are released in a conveyor belt of the mundane – Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Huntsman, Hansel & Gretel and so ad nauseum – the soullessness of it all becomes sapping.
Bizarrely then, the budget barely seems to have made a difference to a film that feels all kinds of broken for far too long.
Jack flirts dangerously with total failure. The unforgiveable graphical failings of its CGI (where did all that money go??) capitulate the character and narrative failings of the film as a whole. An early animated sequence detailing the history behind the human world and the giant's world – religious loons get magic beans to climb to heaven but unwittingly find themselves in a Big Unfriendly World, cue violent war and the eventual dominion of men via a magic crown that controls the giants for some reason – looks like something pulled from an early morning children's cartoon. It looks appalling, unforgivably so, and sets a morose tone for the first hour or so of drudgery.
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| 'Ha ha! Ohh, I was in Star Wars once...' |
Fortunately, when the giants eventually show up the whole thing gets a vital boot up the jacksie both narratively and graphically (though the lumbering beasties are hardly bench setting, instead looking actively outdated), injecting a sense of fun and, y’know, adventure to this action adventure film. It culminates in a third act that is all kinds of epic, wherein the opposing teams of little and large clash in an imaginative no-holds-barred battle to the death. It’s a master class in action and pure cinematic entertainment and pulls Jack back from the maws of defeat.
Conclusively then, Bryan Singer’s direction is equal parts hit and miss in a film that – all elements considered - coasts merrily down the path of ‘alright.’ Action scenes are – fittingly enough – massive bombastic affairs, bursting through walls, worlds and perspectives in a frenetic and visceral assault on the senses. Elsewhere however, characters and narrative are firmly entrenched within ‘blockbuster’ territory: stilted and uninteresting.
It doesn’t bode well for a film when it’s leading man seems thoroughly bored by the entire affair. Nicholas Hoult barely seems to try in an endlessly insipid performance, his acting mounting to little more than widening his eyes a bit when something happens, for example a herd of stampeding murderous giants thundering towards you.
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| Behold! To act, one must merely look a tad constipated. |
The supporting cast, thankfully, compose themselves with far more vigour, though this only to further detriment in the case of giggling goofball Wicke (Ewen Bremner). McGregor, as knight leader Elmont, has fun in a role reminiscent of a more shouty – and feudal – Obi Wan-Kenobi and lifts the film no end, stealing scenes like a classier Robin Hood. Stanly Tucci also stands out – as the imperious Stanly Tucci is want to do - oozing a slimy detestability as the betrothed King’s Advisor Roderick. Much of the rest of the cast, however, are almost entirely too fleeting to truly register; Jack surprisingly revels in the archetypal gruesome death, beheadings and dismemberments are common fair and treated with all the gravitas of a clown’s birthday party. And those who aren’t brutally slaughtered, Warwick Davies’s performer Old Hamm for example, are simply removed from the equation before they dare to become engaging.
‘If you think you know the story, you don’t Jack’ one of the film’s taglines flatulently states and, to it’s credit, Jackdoes a commendable job of addressing those ‘it isn’t like the tale!’ squawks, concluding with an interesting if not goofy sequence that pulls us up to the modern day. It’s a shame then that, despite the sturdy narrative foundations, Jack does itself little credit: plot points are signposted with flashing neon lights and coincidences are thrown around with a smutty flippancy.
Inconsistency is a hairy issue too: the Princess wants independence and yet crumbles instantaneously under the slightest provocation; the giant’s size and prowess changes from scene to scene to best compliment whatever is going on, unable to win a tug-o-war with a bunch of puny humans one minute while being able to tear a windmill to lego bricks in another; tone alternates from slapstick humour to gruesome (but always family friendly) death in a heartbeat and back again. None of it is deal breaking but it culminates to create a sense of incompletion, like the production team thought ‘hey, you know what would be awesome? A crazy-ass explody Jack and the Beanstalk remake’ and then doggedly went nowhere with it.
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| Dem textures. This is what happens with video games get too real |
Verdict
It isn’t hard to see why Jack the Giant Slayer flopped in the States: it does absolutely nothing new and instead clings to the coattails of its fairytale predecessors, albeit with less able guidance. Having said that, it’s still a (largely) competent production saved from the mire with a climax taken straight out of the top draw. Have no doubt, if not for the ending, Jack would resolutely be one to avoid. As it stands however, it is the epitome of popcorn fodder, an easy-going 100 minutes or so if ever a spare evening shows up.
3/5
You see his face there? Yeah, you can expect a fairly similar feeling:
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