Jack The Giant Slayer Movie Reviews

Quite curiously, ever since the new millennium kicked off, Hollywood has been obsessive about the world being saved from extinction, a fear perhaps exacerbated by the 9/11 Twin Towers tragedy. Be that as it may, superheroes of all shapes and sizes have also come to the rescue of imperiled kingdoms, particularly in the recent glut of special effects extravaganzas adapted from fairy tales. Here's one more case in point. Jack The Giant Slayer

Recently filmmakers have been dusting off fairy tales and giving them a revisionist feminist spin. As Red Riding Hood and Mirror Mirror suggest, striking a balance between the old (and often sexist) and the new (and vaguely progressive) is trickier than it might seem. The makers of Snow White and the Huntsman tried to reconcile two potentially irreconcilable ideas — a thoroughly modern miss and an old-fashioned happily ever after

A monk gives farm boy Jack ( Nicholas Hoult) some magical beans in exchange for his horse. Jack accidentally drops one of the beans. It erupts into a gigantic beanstalk which reaches to the sky, taking Jack's house and Princess Isabelle ( Eleanor Tomlinson) along with it. The beanstalk leads to the land of the giants. In order to rescue the princess, her conniving would-be groom Roderick ( Stanley Tucci), love-struck Jack and the king's brave knight

Evidently made for no other reason than to cash in on the current trend of revisionist storybook fantasies, 'Jack the Giant Slayer', directed by The Usual Suspects' Bryan Singer, is a mostly forgettable adventure based on the popular children's folktale, Jack and the Beanstalk. As many as three screenwriters are responsible for this overstuffed script, that recycles too many familiar plotlines, never succeeding in creating anything significantly original

Armpit-smelling giants, cute farm boy, argumentative princess, evil regent, and $200 million worth of CGI, 3D -- one can almost hear the groans coming. But, hold that thought. Talented director Bryan Singer, working with a gifted cast that goes beyond its brief, makes this tale of a boy who went up a beanstalk worth its giants and million-dollar tag -- ironically, till he decides to squeeze every penny out of it