Jack the Giant Slayer – Movie Review

Even as I saw the trailer of “Jack the Giant Slayer” I knew that it was going to be one of those corny adaptations of a well know fairy tale, but what piqued my interest was the fact that it was Bryan Singer who was at the helm. Given his earlier filmography which included movies like the X-Men films, Superman Returns and Valkyrie, I decided to watch it, and also because I wanted some mindless entertainment after a series of quite serious movies.

The movie itself takes the fairy tale of Jack and the Beanstalk quite a few miles further than originally intended to and creates a land of giants called Gantua between earth and the heavens. A king called Eric, the Great (Eric, the Terrible for the giants) uses black magic and the heart of a giant to forge a crown which is the only thing that controls the giants, and he uses this crown to banish the giants permanently to Gantua.

As luck would have it, centuries later, Jack a simple farm boy happens to come in possession of magic beans which when rooted creates these giant beanstalks using which the path from earth to Gantua is opened up. What ensues forms the crux of the movie.

What I liked about the movie was the fact that it didn’t take itself too seriously at times, and in fact one of the actors, Ewan McGregor seems to be having so much fun in his role as the leader of the Guardians, the royal guards.

As expected, the princess of the kingdom Isabella falls in love with Jack who happens to rescue her not once, but twice from the giants during the course of the movie. And as is the norm with every fairy tale ending, they end up getting married and living happily ever after.

Nothing too serious or must-watch about this movie. Watch it if you are looking for mindless fun and suspension of disbelief kind of movies.

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All images in this post have been sourced from IMDB.