Jack the giant slayer: Modest adventure

Jack the giant slayer
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, Bill Nighy, Ewan McGregor
Rated: 5/10
This is another kind of Jack and, well, quite another kind of beanstalk. Yes, it goes up to high heavens with the speed of a rocket once the bean spilling happens, but it is not a door to heaven — but hell — that it touches. There’s a princess too, who does what most princesses do on Hollywood screen all the time — trying to run away from the solitary grandeur they are caged in and look for adventure, mostly with the help of a down to Earth, most unsuitable commoner!
Then there are these giants meant to scare you but all they manage to do is to make you cringe in revulsion. No, it is not about their size so much as it is about their unclean existence. You have a twin head with teeth up to their gills in yellow filth! That’s the common part of these unexplained monsters who have centuries ago been banished somewhere between heaven and earth. Then there is all the nose picking which really gets to you as the sticky extraction is used to make a falafel wrap of the good old general out to destroy this menace to humanity.
Around all this muck, there is also the poor little Jack whose open fear for heights can get clouded only by his spirit of adventure with the princess both of whom are climbing this destructive beanstalk as soon as the movie opens.
What follows is an adventure-romance-revenge story which would have done well as an animation perhaps. In this format, which is 3D as you may have guessed already, it looks like a mishmash of sorts yearning for a solid grounding in the form of a storyline.
Source: The Sunday Pioneer, 3 March, 2013

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