Film: Jack the Giant Slayer

Director: Bryan Singer
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Glynn Place Stadium Cinemas
Grade: C+

Poor Bryan Singer. I don't think he ever fully recovered from the critical slaughter of Superman Returns (a movie I still think is not as bad as everyone else seems to think). Since then he had Valkyrie--solid but not great--a couple of TV movies (Football Wives, which I don't know anything about, and Mockingbird Lane, which is a reboot of the Munsters, and that in itself is horrific) and this.

Now, maybe (as a lot of directors and actors do) he just has kids now and so is turning towards more family-oriented fare. But this movie was just bland enough that it's hard for me to acknowledge that this is the same director who brought me The Usual Suspects and X2. Where is the wit and cleverness that drove those two movies? Where is the tight action and suspense?

This movie is not bad, really. I enjoyed it well enough, and I did like it more than Snitch, our last theater outing (the bleak movie season of the first quarter of the year strikes again). And there were some fun scenes. And if I had a ten-year-old son or daughter, this is exactly the kind of movie I'd be excited to take them to. But overall it's also a movie that will do fine, and it will do fine on DVD, but it will never be anyone's "favorite movie." And it will never be one (as with The Usual Suspects) where I'll be excited to find people who haven't seen it to share with. It's got average CGI, main characters that are just this side of Snoozeville, and a story that really doesn't twist the famous fairy tale in any exciting ways.

On the other hand, it does have a scenery-chewing Stanley Tucci and an entertaining Ewan McGregor, so I guess it's not all bad. It's just not all that good, either.

Alternate Film Title: "That's King Al Swearengen to You" (Deadwood, I miss you)