Jack The Giant Slayer: What I Thought!

Bryan Singer is undoubtedly a very skilled Director, this is the guy who gave us The Usual Suspects and the best example for the first perfect comicbook movie: X-Men. Known for handling an ensemble cast with ease, his direction packs all kinda punch. Cant say all these lately though. Remember that awful Superman Returns? It was more a mushy Lois and Clarke story than a good Superman movie, pushing the franchise further down to depths.

 Another addition to his disgrace is this year’s Jack The Giant Slayer. Unlike studios going for rebooting every piece of crap there is, this one is cashing on the ‘re-imagined retelling of a classic fairytale’. Previously we had got the moronic Snow White & The Huntsman and the amusing but shallow Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters. This time though the wheel of misfortune landed on a modern day retelling of Jack & The Beanstalk. I used to love the tale of Jack, the beanstalk, the golden goose and but ofcourse the giant. The illustrations from the huge fairytale book still afresh in my head. It was as simple as that and exactly why it retains the title of one of the best fairytales ever. What we’ve got here with Jack The Giant Slayer is a mangled mess of a fairytale. Jack The Giant Slayer is unnecesarily filled with one dimensional characters, a convoluted plot about the war going on between humans and giants and unconvincing CG Giants…loads of em.

Despite having some major AAA actors like Ian McShane, Stanley Tucci, Eddie Marsan, everybody among the cast felt like they were forced to act. Even the ever wonderful Ewan McGregor was not at his best here. And please don’t get me started on Nicholas Hoult as Jack. I was like WTF when I’d seen him in X-men First Class. If there ever was a male Kristen Stewart counterpart, that’d be him. I say he’s better off playing the zombie in Warm Bodies.

 The only saving graces are the bewitchingly gorgeous Eleanor Tomlinson as Princess Isabelle who’d, if not by acting charms, will steal the scene via pleasing your eyes and a better mocapped Bill Nighy as the giant General Fallon; he atleast brought some life to the otherwise lifeless CG giant.

In spite of being PG13 its ridden with very dark visuals. PS: Mr Bryan, If you are still going for a gorefest you better don’t chop off the juicy parts…like when a giant is shown biting the head off a guy though quickly snipped so as not to show gore.

Now that I’ve seen this along with Bryan’s recent attempts at TV’s Mockingbird Lane, my thoughts regarding X-Men Days of the Future Past remains perilously skeptic.