Film Review: "Jack the Giant Slayer"

As a regular moviegoer since 2004, I have come to love and revere the work of a couple particular filmmakers.  They are directors who may not make a perfect film each time they step behind the camera, but they can be counted on to produce something that even if it doesn’t quite work, contains some memorable thoughts and images.  “Jack the Giant Slayer,” the eighth feature from the bona fide blockbuster maker Bryan Singer, has both those things.  They are some tender romantic scenes and a delightfully splashy climb up a giant bean stalk.  But at the end of the day, those small delights aren’t enough to save what is easily one of Mr. Singer’s weakest offerings.

            Sadly, the films problems surface immediately.  We get a parade of film studio logos, accompanied by John Ottman’s grand score, but as the film fades in on the young farm boy Jack, the soundtrack goes quiet and the tension evaporates.  It only gets worse.  As Jack’s father reads him a bedtime story about a time when giants walked the Earth, we see the tale rendered in fake-looking CGI that it strikingly texture-less and ugly.  It’s a relief when the sequence ends and the film jumps forward to an eighteen-year-old Jack, heading off to a medieval market to sell a horse.

            As played by Nicholas Hoult, Jack is an entertainingly bumbling nerd.  We can’t even win a fight with a drunkard, which is what makes him charming—he’s a stuttering, unheroic lad who gets in way over his head (Mr. Hoult played the same sort of character in “X-Men: First Class,” which Mr. Singer produced).  When Jack gets a midnight visit from the Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson), he finds himself wrapped up in adventure that brings him into war with the giants of legend.  And, as in the classic fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk,” his adventure begins when he climbs up a great vine that has risen into the sky.

            The climb up the beanstalk is easily the finest sequence in the film.  Tall and tangled, the stalk is vertical yet filled with all sorts of nooks and crannies (Jack even manages to sleep on the climb up).  And once our hero reaches the top, we’re treated to a stunning image—Jack standing alone, looking down at the clouds.  It’s the first time in the film that our hero grasps the majesty of the world he lives in, and it reminded me fleetingly of the glorious flying sequences in Mr. Singer’s 2006 film “Superman Returns.”  Better than most, this gifted director understands that fantasy can be a profound expression of poetic beauty and wonder.

            It is for this reason that I think that giants had to be a part of the story at all.  As envisioned in the film, they’re lumbering, dumb brutes who make for bland antagonists.  But more to the point, they are a garishly ugly presence, mainly played for failed comedic value (there is a particularly lame joke about giant snot).  By the time they descended to Earth and started hurling trees at our heroes, I felt utterly irked.  What is the point of lavishing some much attention on a villainous force that is neither entertaining, nor truly menacing?

            Ever since the first trailers for “Jack the Giant Slayer” hit the Internet, the film has been plagued with a degree of smirking anticipation—for many, it was a bad idea that only looked worse when actual footage was revealed.  But frankly, I expected better.  “Jack and the Beanstalk” might not be the finest cinematic source material, but the appeal of Mr. Singer’s work has been not just the stories he tells but the way he tells them.  I never cared for Superman movies, but Mr. Singer’s peppering of “Returns” with visual beauty and humor sold me on the story.  It is frankly a bit shocking that he was not able to bring more poetry and beauty to Jack’s story.

            Truth be told, Jack is part of the film’s ugliness.  In the climactic giant battle, a two-headed asks Jack’s name.  The kid’s soulless reply?  “It’s Jack, you freak!”  For some, this might seem like a poorly-written verbal barb.  But there is significance in this moment.  It is Mr. Singer who, as the director of the comic book films “X-Men” and “X2,” used to tell stories about freaks who, while terrifying on the outside, were just as human as their opponents.  Knowing that, the viewer’s only recourse is to grit their teeth through the moment and hope that Mr. Singer rediscovers some of that empathy as he embarks on his next film.