Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) - Review

Excitement and CGI await!

Well at least this movie gets one thing right; it totally cribs the Buffy title style of Blank the Blank Slayer.  And that's about the best thing I can say for this dull, overly CGI'd mess of a movie.  Oh Bryan Singer, what have you done?  Whether you're a fan of The Usual Suspects or the first two X-Men movies or not, you probably wouldn't say that Singer is a bad director.  But here he tries his damndest to prove otherwise.  This isn't one of those "oh ho ho this movie is so terrible" kind of films; this is of the "is it over yet" variety.  Ugh.

Excuse me for a moment.     AAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!

The plot follows the classic Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale, obviously.  I have a big problem with trying to revitilize the fairy tale into an action movie.  Here's the thing: it never works.  I think the closest it has come to working is Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, but even that one is pretty cheesy and uninspired.  I mean, I guess all of this started with The Brothers Grimm and since then, every single fairy tale based movie has to be dark, gritty, and awful.

I honestly didn't take too much away from this movie.  The main actor, Nicholas Hoult was okay (though he's far far better in Warm Bodies) and Ewan McGregor is in it!  He's always fun, even in bad stuff.  Um... other than that, there's not much that's actually memorable about the movie.

Climb beanstalk.  Visit Giant Land.  Kill Giants.  Cut beanstalk.  Roll credits.

Seriously, there's not much to it, and trust me, I didn't spoil a single thing right there despite telling you the entire movie in a few words.  You've seen this movie before, even if you think you haven't.  I hate those kinds of movies; I hate predictable action fare, but hey, that's what I get for watching a retelling of an old fairy tale, I guess.