“Jack the Giant Slayer” is a big ole bloated boring movie that never really gets to “so bad it is good” territories. Instead it is just forgettable, a fairy tale turned into a $200 million blockbuster, but somehow despite the scale and budget, it doesn’t feel like a big old blockbuster. Instead it is kind of a breezy tale of men versus giants, with some familiar iconography thrown in to tie it all to something preexisting, because obviously no one wants to watch something that isn’t based on something else, right?

The story centers around Jack (Nicholas Hoult, Warm Bodies), a young farmer boy who gets his hands on some magic beans, one of which causes a giant beanstalk to the grow into the heavens. But unlike in the old tale “Jack and the Beanstalk,” these heavens are filled with gross looking Giants who are eager to find a way back down to the Earth to eat humans. There is also some bit about a magic crown made from a melted down Giant’s heart and black magic that controls the Giants, and a usurper (Stanley Tucci, The Hunger Games, Captain America: The First Avenger) to the crown of the king (Ian McShane, Snow White and the Huntsman) and his rambunctious daughter (Eleanor Tomlinson, Alice in Wonderland) who really starts a lot of the mess to begin with when she runs off from home because she feels all like trapped and stuff.Continue Reading …