Movie Review: "Jack the Giant Slayer"

  So, for the first movie we see in the theater in 2013, we picked "Jack the Giant Slayer." (Had to see it, it has Ewan McGregor.) This is actually a pretty entertaining movie. It uses the fairy tale as a basis, but expands it to include a princess, her father and her evil suitor. And instead of one giant, there's an entire army of giants. The CGI is extensive, and very well done for the most part. I thought the beanstalk looked fake, or just off somehow in some scenes, but it's a fairy tale, so realism isn't that big an issue.

  It's a fairly standard fairy tale plot: Jack trades his horse for magic beans, a bean falls under the house, grows a beanstalk that takes the house, with the princess in it (subplot - the princess is a runaway in search of adventure) up to the land of the giants. Jack, the captain of the guard (Ewan McGregor) and the evil suitor (Stanley Tucci) go up the beanstalk to rescue her, and prevent a war with the army of giants. Except for evil suitor, who actually wants to use a giant-controlling crown to create his own army to take over the kingdom.

 There's not a lot of depth to any of the characters, and at almost two hours, it could certainly be shorter. But the dialogue rings pretty true, there's nothing too clunky or awkward. (That can be a real problem in fantasy movies.) I'm not going to watch this over and over - it's mildly entertaining, but not very memorable. I had a problem with the ending: not to give anything away, but I thought the wrong person ended up wearing the crown at the end. But overall, not a waste of money.