In Theaters: March 1st, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 54 minutes (114 minutes)
Not
Awful,
Not
Wonderful!
But
Likeable.
"Jack the Giant Killer" tells the story of an ancient war that is reignited when a young farmhand unwittingly opens a gateway between our world and a fearsome race of giants. Unleashed on the Earth for the first time in centuries, the giants strive to reclaim the land they once lost, forcing the young man, Jack, into the battle of his life to stop them. Fighting for a kingdom, its people, and the love of a brave princess, he comes face to face with the unstoppable warriors he thought only existed in legend--and gets the chance to become a legend himself.
The script sets up the situation and characters nicely, and the actors are terrific.
Critic Score: 3/4
Although it often feels there's more of mechanics than the muse keeping Jack the Giant Slayer going, this sprightly fairy tale reworking is full of beans, smartly written and packs plenty of fun.
Critic Score: 3/4
While it's fine for a director to explore his childhood inspirations, you hope he would bring something a bit more personal to it.
Critic Score: 2/4
"Jack" seems designed to appeal to a very narrow, and possibly illusory, demographic: the mature moppet.
Critic Score: 1.5/4
Not awful, not wonderful, Jack the Giant Slayer is a midrange fairy tale epic that's a lot more ho-hum than fee-fi-fo-fum.
Critic Score: C+
Jack the Giant Slayer is slight, but consistently amusing.
The movie feels so much like a video game that your fingers instinctively itch to do something, though a Jack video game isn't one we'd really want to play.
"Jack the Giant Slayer" seems more likely to be "Jack the Giant Bomb."
Critic Score: C-
It's fast paced, energetic, and enormously likeable.
Critic Score: 3/4
Singer's take on ye olde yarne has wit about it, and it certainly looks good.
Critic Score: 2.5/4
There may never have been a Jack tale that delivered so little pleasure for so many dollars as what we have here.
Critic Score: 1/5
What's the point of making a movie with a 9-year-old boy's sensibility, then including just enough violence to garner a PG-13 rating?
Critic Score: 1/4
Jack's problem is that he's a commoner, but the movie's problem is that its script is commoner still, an enchantment-free pretext for animated action, straight-ahead storytelling and ersatz romance.
"Jack the Giant Slayer" is the kind of old-fashioned, entertaining fantasy-adventure you once saw regularly in theaters.
Critic Score: 3/4
There's more to this Jack and the Beanstalk adaptation than Fee-fi-fo-fum.
Critic Score: 2.5/4
It feels like a film made by a committee, for a demographic rather than an audience. It's a tale full of sound and fury (and flying bodies) signifying nothing.
Critic Score: 2/4
This finally is just a digitally souped-up, one-dimensional take on "Jack and the Beanstalk," capped by the kind of interminable blowout that makes many big-studio entertainments feel as long as the last Oscars.
Critic Score: 2.5/5
At its heart, the film is just a simple fairy tale, an epic reduced to an engaging adventure of a bedtime story.
Critic Score: 6/10
This digitally tricked-out fairy tale makes for a reasonably engaging kids' fantasy, but at best we're talking about a junior varsity "Lord of the Rings."
Critic Score: 2.5/4
This grotesque world is imaginatively, magically rendered with heavy stone architecture and a dreary lack of adornment. It's such an intriguing place that you wouldn't mind staying a bit longer.
Critic Score: 3/4
Big and loud and so bland it kinda feels like we've been sold a bill of goods.
Critic Score: 2/5
Jack the Giant Slayer proves the axiom "If you can't make it good, make it 3D."
Critic Score: 2/4
The director, Bryan Singer, works more anonymously here than he did in the X-Men films. Jack the Giant Slayer feels like it could have been made by anyone.
Critic Score: C+
If you thought the tale ended when Jack clambered back down from the skies, then you haven't given it as much thought as Singer.
Critic Score: 3/4
It's stuck in a big-budget-movie middle ground - not quite thrilling enough to be an action movie, not quite funny enough for a comedy - and, once you've pondered the impressive size of the beanstalk, there's not much else there.
Critic Score: 2.5/4
By the time the giants have descended the beanstalk and laid siege to the king's castle, and the boiling oil comes out with the flaming arrows and the flying flaming trees, it's like: Enough already.
Critic Score: 2/4
The action is a little too intense for very young children. But for everyone else, including cynical grown-up critics who didn't think they'd ever give a Fee, a Fi, a Fo or a Fum about this movie, it's a terrific adventure.
Critic Score: 3.5/4
[M]ay get you habitually reaching for your PS3 controller to jab the cut-scene skipping "X" button
Critic Score: C+
The film is like a big Disneyland ride, full of wonder and myth.
Critic Score: 4/5
''Jack the Giant Slayer'' ends up being smart, thrilling and a whole lot of fun.
Critic Score: 3/4
Fee-fi-fo-fum, this fairy-tale retread is pretty dumb.
Simply in terms of efficient storytelling, clear logistics and consistent viewer engagement, Jack is markedly superior to the recent "Hobbit."
Singer evokes another era of fantasy filmmaking when the illusions before our eyes were created in an artist's studio rather than a computer lab. It's more Jason and the Argonauts than Shia and the Transformers.
©2013 Warner Bros.