2013's Most Anticipated: Jack the Giant Slayer

46. Jack the Giant Slayer (PG-13) - Runtime: 114 minutes
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci
Director: Bryan Singer
Writer: Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie, Dan Studney

I've been enjoying these fairy tale remakes. It's cool to see a different take on some of these well-known stories. But half the time they just end up being boring or too focused on looking cool and having cool, CGI-laden action scenes, when they should spend more time on the characters. Bryan Singer may have bitten of more than he could chew with Jack the Giant Slayer.

The movie opens up with a history of the giants and the humans and how the humans banished the giants back to their kingdom way up in the air. In the present day, Jack believes these stories to be true and accepts some magic beans from a monk. You know the rest of the story - the beanstalk grows and takes the princess with it. So it's up to Jack and the king's men to rescue the princess. Meanwhile a crazy lord is hell bent on controlling the giants with a magical crown infused with the blood of the giants. Yeah, it's not the greatest of plots.

The biggest problem with the movie is that it's too by-the-book. It doesn't stray too far away from the original story and it just is, well, boring. There's not enough fantastical whimsy - the movie seems to care too much about following the original story that to try and be daring by taking a perspective from the giants' point of view or even trying to show a massive war. Instead, Jack does his usual hiding and eluding the giants to rescue the princess and then the movie spends the last 30 minutes showing the humans desperately defending their city to no avail.

I couldn't care anything about anyone in this movie. It's just too dull. I think the movie loves showing off the giants throwing uprooted trees at people and seeing the giant beanstalk grow and then demolish things as it falls down. This movie loves its visual effects, but it's not enough to save it. And the acting is just ho-hum. Even my rule of Stanley Tucci - who makes every movie better when he's in it - gets questioned. He plays the villain, but his character is just a generic villain with barely any motivation that even Tucci couldn't save the role.

And the ending is so mind-blowingly insane that it encapsulates the whole idea of the movie - why even bother? SPOILER: at the end they show the magical crown that controls the giants actually being the crown in a museum in modern day London. SO IT WAS REAL ALL ALONG - THIS IS NOT A FAIRY TALE BUT A TELLING TALE OF HUMAN HISTORY! I don't know what the hell kind of point that makes - just that it doesn't make sense at all. It's all really pointless and terrible to be honest and I really hope Bryan Singer gets his shit together for the new X-Men movie, because this is not what I need.

Rating: Not Worth Paying For!