You have to know that when you leave a house with a horse and cart that don’t belong to you and you return with a handful of beans there is going to be trouble. Might not be the trouble you anticipate exactly … but there is going to be trouble.
So wait … the title Jack the Giant Slayer … ? Does Jack slay giants or is he a really large instrument of death?
We know the Jack and the Beanstalk tale. I didn’t reckon for quite an Aliens take on it. Jack acquires the beans, magic beanstalk lifts us out of middle ages Kansas or wherever, yada yada yada, sure; then the land in the clouds has not one giant, but many. And they’re all man-giants. And they’ve been there for generations and generations. Like the same guys on the collector stamp set also show up alive and well in the clouds. Without aging or women, you’d think this boy band would make with the Peter Pan route – woohoo! All we do is fight, hunt, grunt and emanate a fine pungent aroma! And where did the giants come from? There must be a queen, right? This is a hive of giants, isn’t it? I can but conclude the giants, though human in appearance, are more like big insects. I mean, especially when you consider what a fine sense of smell the giants have. You … you can smell distinctive DNA, can you? I’m not gonna ask how. Well, just assume that giants really can tell one human’s blood from another by smell alone. And yet none of them seems bothered by the fact that they all need 
a bath. Maybe giants are more like dogs than insects. Anyway, now that we’ve introduced a whole new CGI race, it’s important to kill ‘em off.
Enter Jack (Nicholas Hoult – we just saw him as zombie Romeo). So he’s a slayer now, is he? In the Age of Clay(mation), he was a giant killer. Now, he’s the Buffy of fairy tale farmers. Not entirely sure why this minor title change makes him more accessible to the kids, but, arguably, it does. While trading his dignity for magic beans, Jack also finds Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) pulling a Jasmine. He takes a right cross to defend her honor while she’s incognito and true love is born. Oh, if that’s all it ever took. *sigh* Naturally, she shows up later at his hut lookin’ for some zombie lovin’ , er, unaware that she has found, once again, the only commoner she’s ever spoken to. And within two minutes, she’s trapped alone in the shed he calls home and is lofted skywards towards the land of human-eating giants. That’ll teach her to pull a Jasmine. Maybe.
The claymation-sans-clay adventure will keep you entertained for an afternoon. Stanley Tucci’s powerplay, alpha giant’s special head, Ewan McGregor as a pig-in-a-blanket … all good stuff. It’s the kind of film that begs for overacting and gets it when needed. If you need to entertain a child, you can do a lot worse.
Boy Jack of limited means
As a zombie appeals to teens
If you gotta trade
You be glad you stayed
His bargainin’ skillz are for beans
Rated PG-13, 114 Minutes
D: Bryan Singer
W: Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie, Dan Studney & David Dobkin
Genre: Fractured fairy tale
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Patriot fans
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The CGI challenged
