Jack the Giant Slayer Movie Review

I haven’t been sleeping nicely since year 2013 started.  I am so absorbed at work that I realised I needed to do something to bring balance into my life.  So in spite of having only 3 hours of sleep, I ended up watching Jack The Giant Slayer at 1AM in the morning at the Newport Mall.

I’m not sure if I didn’t like the movie much or if I was too tired but I slept most of the time while watching Jack the Giant Slayer.  Maybe the abnormally cold temperature inside Newport Cinema had something to do with it but I felt there was something missing in the movie.

Jack the Giant Slayer was based on two fairy tales: Jack and the Beanstalk & Jack the Giant Killer.  It tells the story of an ancient war between human and giants.  Jack is the hero of this story – a young boy who must rescue a beautiful princess when the gateway to the human world was accidentally opened to the giants.  This includes fighting for the the princess’ kingdom and its people too.

The film was a modern take of the ancient fairy tale adventure that we grew to know when we were still kids..

Jack the Giant Slayer had a budget of $195 million yet it only earned $50 million and that’s just sad.  In my opinion, there are hits and misses on this film.  Unfortunately, the misses overpowered the good ones which made the film earn so little 🙁

The pros:

• Acting –  I liked the acting of the main characters in the film.  They made do with whatever the story was and that was admirable considering the rawness of the material
• Special effects – the film used a lot of CGI effects.  I loved how the giants looked and how the kingdom panned out in the film.  It was eye candy all over!

The cons:

• Target audience mismatch – At first, I didn’t wanna watch the movie because I had the impression that Jack the Giant Slayer was for kids.  However, the movie was tagged PG-13 which I felt was a disconnect.  People had the impression that the movie was for kids but it was actually for teenagers and adults alike.
• Story flow – I do not know how to explain this but I wasn’t really too giddy about the scenes in the film.  In fact, there were a lot of times that I was confused about the story.  Two things that I didn’t like: (1) are the giants really the villain here or are they just props in the movie? (2) Can Jack really slay giants?  I felt that his character was so weak.  Elmont (Ewan McGregor) was more heroic in this film than the main character!

I liked the movie but didn’t love it.  I must admit I wasn’t really wowed and the only thing that stuck in my head was how handsome Ewan McGregor was in Jack the Giant Slayer.

My Rating for Jack the Giant Slayer: 3 out of 5 stars