Stars: Nicholas Hoult, Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
X-Men director Bryan Singer is at the reins of this fairy-tale romp as Jack (Nicholas Hoult), a humble farm boy battles a race of giants and tries to rescue the princess.
There is no princess in the original story the film is adapted from, Jack and the Beanstalk. In the original English folktale, Jack trades a cow for magic beans. Overnight, the beans grow into a huge beanstalk which Jack climbs to another world where he encounters a giant’s wife. Apparently, Englishmen are the giant’s favorite food, but when he says he smells his favorite delicacy, his wife covers for Jack and hides him. Jack returns her kindness by robbing the couple blind. Guess the flim’s producers were hoping for a sexier ending than a boy living happily ever after with his mum on his ill-gotten gains. –p.d. lee
