Jack The Giant Slayer - "We've faded into legend..."
Bryan Singer of Usual Suspects and X-men fame adapts "Jack The Giant Slayer" to the big screen for our viewing pleasure.....at least I'm sure that was his intention. All aboard the fairytale adaptation box office disaster train, next stop mediocrity. What really killed this film was the lack of defined tone, a defined villain, bad casting & surprisingly bad production values. It was surprising to see so many characters channel Monty Python type personalities, with campy over the top acting set in a film that takes itself way too seriously for what it is. The plot is the fairytale at its core but they tried to make it tonally dark but then slapped a PG rating on it. People literally get stabbed, shot with arrows in the face and decapitated but not an ounce of blood in sight which is ridiculous. The CGI of the giants is sub-par especially for a director who made two X-Men films look gorgeous. The cinematography is rather bland it looked like simple "point and shoot" in front of large green screens.
The pacing is noticeably irritating, there's very little action and when there is it comes in snippets and you have to wade through terrible character development for 2 hours just to get to the anti-climactic cliched "face-off" between the humans and the giants. The protagonists Jack (Nicholas Hoult) & Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) have no romantic chemistry and they hug an awful lot for complete strangers and in completely odd circumstances. Their performances are forgettable but what's sad is that, that applies for the whole cast. Ewan McGregor maybe guilty of cashing in on a big paycheck here, Ian McShane was laughable & Stanley Tucci who usually carries quality in his pocket was sorely underused and misdirected. Also too many of the central characters just suddenly die in the film where the score suddenly lifts into a dramatic rhythm that's supposed to evoke some emotion out of us, instead it has the reverse effect because you just don't care. The giants aren't terribly threatening, they don't pose a credible threat when they have two great weaknesses that are overly exploited in the film 1. A magic crown that conveniently controls them & 2. Arrows to the face even though they are all completely armored.
It's a dull film, with terrible pacing, horrible character development (if any), no chemistry between our two love birds, an anti-climactic ending and complete misdirection of the actors by the usually consistent Bryan Singer. Also the costume department failed miserably, the soldier uniforms looked like plastic and you could tell the swords were rubber when they wobbled mid-swing. Usually ensemble casts are his game just look at "Valkyrie" or "The Usual Suspects", something went terribly wrong with this script when they tried to make it dark but also market it towards families and children, they even went as far as to delay it 9 months and change the name from "Jack the Giant Killer" to "Jack the Giant Slayer" because that supposedly sounds less violent. The film was shot in 3D as opposed to being post converted but so what? 3D is huge turn off and adds 3-5$ a ticket which is why families (your target audience) didn't go and pay an arm and a leg to see your mediocre film. I can put this behind me and take solace in the fact that Bryan Singer is returning to the "X-Men" franchise with "X-Men: Days of Future Past". Pass on this 1.5/5
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