Originally written for publishing on March 3, 2013.
Hitting theaters March 1, “Jack the Giant Slayer” is a highly anticipated film that fails in delivering the performance and storyline that many viewers were hoping for.
The film had over $200 million invested into the production and marketing, and has so far only made $28 million in its first week of release. The film looks to continue to fall downward in the future weeks during its time on the big screen.
The storyline of the movie is reminiscent of the tale “Jack and the Beanstalk,” keeping the concept of a boy named Jack who obtains magical beans, climbs the beanstalk, entering into the second world of giants. Unfortunately all the added details that the children’s story does not set up add nothing interesting to the movie.
Jack loses his parents to the plague and lives with his uncle on a farm and visits a kingdom to sell a horse. During that trip, he trades the horse for the magic beans and happens to run into the kingdom’s angst princess and falls in love with her. The beanstalk is grown and she is somehow caught inside the stalk and is trapped on the giants’ land. The rest is Jack’s quest to rescue her.
Out of the hundreds of giants in the film, Jack technically “slays” only two giants, leaving trailers to be misleading when depicting the film to be thrilling and action-packed. Some scenes seemed to be irrelevant to the storyline, and those issues seemed never to be resolved, which probably hurt the film the most. Storyline aside, “Jack the Giant Slayer” was somewhat visually stimulating during small scenes.
Offered in 2D, 3D and IMAX theaters, the film was designed to excite the audience through scenes with flying objects, fire and close ups on the animated giants. Although these scenes were effective in 3D, it is recommended to save your money and lower you expectations on the visual effects.
Altogether, “Jack the Giant Slayer” presents itself as more of a children’s film. It is gentle hearted with child-like humor and easy to understand dialogue to accompany the typical boy-gets-girl plotting.
