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Feb 27, 201388A rousing, original and thoroughly entertaining adventure.
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Feb 27, 201380One reason it works so well: The film always looks believable, and it’s easy to get wrapped into Singer’s fairy-tale world.
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80By the standards of today's bombastic "event" movies, this is a refreshingly modest endeavor—one in which the main event is the skillful holding of our attention, all the way from "Once upon a time" to "Happily ever after."
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75Jack the Giant Slayer is an enjoyable fantasy/adventure whose magic is partially undermined by marginal 3-D.
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75A giant chef character is an icky bit of inspiration (complete with booger humor to soothe any shell-shocked young’uns in the audience), and the monsters are key to an epic-scale third act. If you thought the tale ended when Jack clambered back down from the skies, then you haven’t given it as much thought as Singer.
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70Singer honors a child's desire not only for adventure but for noble deeds, for loyalty and friendship. [18 March 2013, p.87]
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70There's little facetious comedy a la the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series. It's all traditional stuff, done well but without an original spark.
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67Ultimately, it’s hard and a bit pointless to nitpick Jack The Giant Slayer because it never sets out to be or presents itself as anything more than a slightly beefed up fairy tale.
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63Peter Jackson devotees may not like to hear this, but Jack the Giant Slayer is far more accomplished, visually speaking, than The Hobbit: An Unexpected Snooze, I mean, Journey.
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63Vivid visuals are the key to this handsome and moderately entertaining adventure. And the tone is more fairy-tale appropriate than video-game friendly, though the effects-laden swashbuckling sometimes obscures efforts at light whimsy.
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63This digitally tricked-out fairy tale makes for a reasonably engaging kids’ fantasy, but at best we’re talking about a junior varsity “Lord of the Rings.” It’s March. What did you expect?
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63For all Singer’s expertise at making the fantastic real, all we’re left with here is an expensive-looking bauble – worth looking over, but not really anything to treasure.
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60Far from the giant mess you’d expect from the delayed release, late title change and a production history as muddled as the source material, Singer’s tall tale is snatched from disaster by an all-hell-breaks-loose third act.
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60Not one for cynics or bedwetters, if you’re after a ripping, roaring, thigh-slapping giant of a fairytale, Bryan Singer’s blockbuster panto will be right up your beanstalk.
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60So many blockbuster movies are impersonal, micromanaged hashes that Jack, with its bare minimum of craft and commitment, comparatively comes off like a diamond in the rough.
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60The film's main problem — apart from its predictability and the sometimes unconvincing and cartoonish CGI for the army of giants — is that it never entirely commits to what kind of fantasy movie it wants to be.
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60It’s fast, rousing, and blessedly brief.
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58Not awful, not wonderful, Jack the Giant Slayer is a midrange fairy tale epic that’s a lot more ho-hum than fee-fi-fo-fum.
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58This is how a fairy-tale movie gives us our money's worth today. Even if once upon a time, it was called overkill.
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58It is highly likely you’ll forget the movie by the time you go to bed.
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50The technology is undeniably there to make a credible beanstalk fly into the heavens, and giants that are utterly grotesque and vividly threatening. But how about something we can take our kids too? Doesn’t anyone want them to be there?
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50While it’s fine for a director to explore his childhood inspirations, you hope he would bring something a bit more personal to it. Instead, Jack the Giant Slayer, while well-crafted, feels entirely generic.
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50Jack's problem is that he's a commoner, but the movie's problem is that its script is commoner still, an enchantment-free pretext for animated action, straight-ahead storytelling and ersatz romance.
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50If it drifts with increasing frequency it’s because, well, this finally is just a digitally souped-up, one-dimensional take on Jack and the Beanstalk.
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50A competent but utterly unnecessary retelling of the story.
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50It's a bloodless, gutless piece of PG-13 fodder, geared to go down easy. That it does. It practically evaporates while you're watching it, lulling when you most want it to levitate.
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50The film is ruled by sound and fury signifying an attempt to launch a new franchise.
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Feb 27, 201350A terrific cast, intelligent direction, state-of-the-art special effects, a strong story, and skilled narrative construction all end up being much ado about not very much.
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50Jack the Giant Slayer feels, unsurprisingly, like an attempt to cash in on a trend, recycling storybook characters, situations and battle sequences to mechanical and wearyingly predictable effect.
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42As is, the slapstick humor and mild repartee won't please many with a mindset above that of a 10-year-old, while the level of (admittedly fantastical) violence might be a bit much for the pre-teen set.
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42The extra shading is nice, but it doesn’t change the degree to which Jack The Giant Slayer feels like a paint-by-numbers story.
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40A director as talented as Singer (“The Usual Suspects,” “X-Men”) should be working to raise popcorn movies to a higher level. Instead, this uninspired effort feels like a colossal letdown.
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37Too scary for very young children, yet too silly for most older fans of director Bryan Singer’s earlier forays into the Superman and X-Men franchises, “Jack” seems designed to appeal to a very narrow, and possibly illusory, demographic: the mature moppet.
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30With some momentary exceptions, Jack the Giant Slayer simply isn't any fun.
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25By the end, I was adding my own internal "Deadwood"-style profanities to McShane's clean dialogue. "For the sake of the (God-@#$%) kingdom, cut it (the @#$%) down!" Movies about mile-high beanstalks shouldn't require additional audience imagination.
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25Jack the Giant Slayer is merely cable TV fodder waiting to happen and not worth a hill of beans, magic or otherwise.
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12This epic waste of $190 million plunders the grab bag of overused plotlines, failing to put its own stamp on much of anything.