From “Red Riding Hood” to Snow White (several times), and even the recent Hansel and Gretel movie, there has been a long-running marathon of terrible fantasy films. Not many people sit around and say to themselves, “Yeah, I’d really love a sub-par film that sucks the marrow out of a children’s tale from the Middle Ages.” And by and large, every adaptation of this type is terrible.
Surprisingly, “Jack the Giant Slayer” is a lot of fun.
No, it’s not a great movie — not by a long shot. But perhaps the producers and director Bryan Singer (“X-Men,” “X2” and “Superman Returns”) understood that while they were making it. There’s something satirical just under the surface of “Giant Slayer,” and at several points during the film, it was clear that it was channeling master of fantasy-film parody “The Princess Bride.” That can only be a good thing.
Even though it’s a fairly banal film with bland characters, a vague “somewhere in Europe” setting and perhaps the most hackneyed plot in recent memory, everyone on screen seems like they’re having fun. And when Ewan McGregor has fun, we have fun.
The plot is, as previously mentioned, incredibly straightforward. Giants and men had a war a long time ago, and a crown was forged that could send the giants back to their Avatar-inspired sky mountains. Said crown was lost, and everything faded into legend. Enter our earnest and idealistic Jack (Nicholas Hoult, “Clash of the Titans,” “Warm Bodies”), who has to sell his horse in the city market. He meets a princess, Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson, “Alice in Wonderland”) in the market, and then promptly sells the horse for beans. Things go downhill for him from there. After he takes the beans home, the princess runs away from her forced marriage and ends up at Jack’s house. Unfortunately, the beans grow into a giant beanstalk, which carries her all the way up to the giant’s island, leaving Jack on the ground. Thus begins a nice adventure to nab her back before she gets turned into giant stew.
The good: None of our main characters are antagonistic, unlikable or difficult. In current fantasy films, the princess must be a strong character. We accept that. However, this is generally interpreted as making the heroine incredibly combative and snarky. This trope generally backfires (see “Prince of Persia”) by making both the main characters seem incredibly petty and more interested in witty banter than anything else. “Giant Slayer” avoids these pitfalls: Jack is actually a pretty nice guy, if a bit dim-witted, and Isabelle is pleasant, if a bit useless. The esteemed Ewan McGregor (“Moulin Rouge,” “Beginners”) plays a derring-do adventurer for the king while channeling swashbucklers of yore, and he seems to enjoy every minute of it. Throw these three together, and the adventure becomes a fun romp through computer-generated landscapes.
Now, the bad. The effects in this film are not very good. This is a problem when the film relies on those effects to create its villainous giants. They don’t feel like threats once we actually see them in the flesh: The giants just look hokey, and they are often played for laughs. The humor in the film is mostly crude or unintentional — it might entertain a 12-year-old or the skater dude who sits next to you during the screening.
In addition, the last 30 minutes of the film consists mostly of large CGI things bashing against other CGI things and people running around yelling at each other. The giants try to break through the wall of the castle and the soldiers keep the gate closed; then, the giants come up with another plan. After 10 minutes of this is repeated, it starts to become yawn-inducing. The film ceases to have fun with its premise at this point, and so does the audience. Then, when combined with a very strange, though clever, epilogue, the film ends on a bit of an odd note.
It’s not a bad film. If you’re looking to turn your brain off and see a blockbuster in which the main character isn’t a jerk or a complete idiot, and eventually gets the pretty girl, then this is the film for you. For everybody else, it might still be worth a watch … if you don’t have to pay for the ticket. (C+)
