Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)

This must be the month of "crappy snoozefests with too much CGI" given the movies I've seen lately. Between "After Earth," "Oz the Great and Powerful," "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters" and now "Jack the Giant Slayer," I should have made June a themed month or something. This is getting really old, man. I need to shake it up or something. All this expensive but meaningless schlock is starting to wear on my nerves.

"Jack the Giant Slayer" isn't honestly as bad as those other films were. It's nowhere near the CGI-frosted horrors of "Oz the Great and Powerful" or the laughably pathetic acting of "After Earth." That much credit I must give it. It's probably the least bad of the four films on that list. Even while "Hansel and Gretel" was honestly a little more entertaining, I cared more about the protagonists in "Jack the Giant Slayer" since they were actually kind of likeable.

That doesn't mean it was good though. It just means that I wasn't pissed off when the credits started rolling. And the reason I wasn't pissed off was because it wasn't worth it to be since "Jack the Giant Slayer" is such a nothing of a movie as to barely be worth having any emotion at all over it.

What can I say about this? You already know the story. Jack (Nicholas Hoult) is a farm-boy who ends up trading a horse for magic beans, they grow into a giant beanstalk, they climb up the beanstalk, there's a land of giants up there, the giants come down and attack the kingdom, Jack and everyone else defeats them, happily ever after, the end. Just add a whole lot of CGI and a useless princess to rescue to it and you've got your movie. Great, let's move on, shall we?

Alright fine, I can't end it there. Talking about something too much is in my nature, after all. Jack is a standard hero-type who is bland as all hell because there isn't anything particularly special about him besides the fact that his name is in the title of the film. I liked Nicholas Hoult as Beast in "X-Men First Class," but there isn't much for him to do here besides gape at the majesty of the CGI landscapes and grin like a dope every time the princess Isabella (Eleanor Tomlinson) is on screen. Whatever.

They had a lot of leather hoodies in ye olde Darke Age, did they?

The far more interesting character is Elmont (Ewan McGregor), a soldier who is tasked with looking after Isabella, and who leads the expedition up the beanstalk to the land of the giants. Out of everyone there, Elmont is hands-down the most proactive member of the cast and under any other circumstance I'd just assume he was the main character. But alas, he is not. Elmont, a bad-ass who takes charge and performs more heroic actions than Jack does is relegated to being merely a background character who pops in every once in a while to be awesome and then leaves.

He and that glorious mustache are too good for this movie.

There is a side plot involving a dude named Roderick (Stanley Tucci), who I guess is the king's adviser or something, and his attempt at controlling the giants with a magical crown so that he can take over the world. I'm assuming he's the king's adviser since it's always the king's adviser who ends up being totally whacked and evil and traitorous. Why kings even had advisers I have no idea. All they do is turn on you.

All the Roderick stuff just ends up being kind of pointless in the end anyway. He doesn't get much accomplished and fails pretty catastrophically during an exceptionally short reign over the giants. But you knew that was coming anyway. I thought the whole thing was a pretty stupid plan from the get-go considering that the giants are far from immortal or unstoppable, and their numbers aren't exactly overwhelming. Roderick couldn't take over the world with just them even if his plan had worked.

Roderick also is not helped by his incredibly obnoxious and frankly confusing assistant, Wicke (Ewen Bremmer) who is this psychopathic wormy dude whom I believe is supposed to be intimidating but is more annoying than anything else, especially so when he starts killing off characters cooler than himself. But thankfully the film sends him down the gullet of a giant in the beginning of the second act, so we're not dealing with him for long. But since it's PG-13 we can't even have a satisfying death scene for him, because the movie always abruptly cuts away from any significant violence just before it happens. This is common throughout the film, makes it look watered down and wussy, and gets really annoying really fast.

By the way, at no point am I buying that Stanley Tucci is a threat to the king when the king is played by Ian McShane. Ian McShane passes more intimidating things through his GI tract than Stanley Tucci and his little minion. Although "Jack the Giant Slayer" makes McShane, the Eternal Bad Ass himself look ridiculous in chintzy golden armor that looks like paper mache, and keeps it pretty low key. So there is little of Al Swearengen to be found here. What a waste.

Seeing Ian McShane in that absurd outfit causes me physical pain.

I can't even get excited about Bill Nighy playing the head giant, Fallon, although his voice work is, as usual, excellent. That classic Nighy quirkiness is present, although Fallon, like everyone else, is such a cardboard cutout of a stock character that it really doesn't matter that Bill is doing a great job. Again, what a waste.

I totally believe that giant is real. Not at all fake looking. Nope.

I think the most significant idea that "Jack the Giant Slayer" had was to imply at the very end of the movie that civilization advanced to our modern age without hot air balloons, blimps, airplanes, satellites, or a day without total cloud cover considering that the last shot of the film shows a very real and still there land of the giants floating in the sky and out of sight past the clouds. Whatever. It's a dumb ending to a pointless film. I can't even get that mad at it since it doesn't matter.

A standard trailer for a standard movie.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Jack the Giant Slayer" is a pretty looking fairy tale as told through the lenses of the most standard and stock movie making machine you could assemble. It's got skill and craftsmanship on the technical side, but there's no imagination or innovation in the script, and like "Oz the Great and Powerful," it has virtually no soul. It's another 9-figure budget extravaganza that left me feeling like I wasted my time.

Snow White and The Huntsman (2012)

Can one single aspect of a film ruin the entire experience? Is it possible to have one thing, one element of a movie be so bad, so truly retched, and so foul that nothing you can think of can justify its disregard?

I mean, Jar Jar Binks was bad, but can you in all honesty tell me that "Star Wars: Episode I" would have been any better without his inclusion? Well, the answer is "yes," but that doesn't mean that by excluding him, the movie would have suddenly become good as opposed to horrifying me to the very core of my soul. Would "Highlander 2" really have been saved after they took out "Zeist?" The Renegade Cut of the film showed us, "Of course not, you dolt." And Skids and Mudflap weren't in "Transformers 3," and that movie still sucked like a puncture wound to the lung. So it would seem that there's usually a bit more to it than just one thing.

But what insanity could possibly afflict a piece of cinema so completely, so fully, and in such an all-encompassing fashion as to be without hope?

 Oh. Oh god.

You know, I don't even know if I should even start with this. The fact that Kristen Stewart is a bad actress is fairly well done to death, and there's little that can be added to the argument. She's like moldy bread in that aspect. Everyone is pretty much in agreement that it sucks, and is something that should be promptly thrown away. However, there is a inexplicably large fan base of moldy bread enthusiasts who say that it's delicious and totally awesome and underrated.

I don't know why these people like moldy bread, but I have two theories that I'm working on. The first is that they were told by the writers of their favorite baked goods style fiction that moldy bread is totally awesome, and since they are such big fans of baked goods style fiction, they eat up whatever is given to them and say "yum." The second theory I have is that they are stupid.

However, there is a third possibility that there is some kind of benefit to moldy bread I have not discovered yet. I have a plan to test this theory, however. I think we should lock Kristen Stewart in a warm, moist cabinet somewhere until her desiccated remains produce penicillin.

This. This expression is the one she wears every. single. frame. of this film.

Upon seeing the trailer, "Snow White & The Huntsman" looked interesting to me at first. Although I'm a little tired of everything getting a "gritty" makeover lately, it seemed like a cool take on the classic fairy tale. And then Kristen Stewart's vacant, baggy-eyed, blank slate of a face showed up on screen to make me groan and instantly fear seeing it. But, the rest of the cast was made up of some pretty intense talent, so I figured that it was worth giving a shot.

What I ended up getting was an interesting conundrum that was pretty much exactly was I figured was going to happen. The movie was actually pretty good. In fact, everything about it was enjoyable, so much so that I would call it kind of awesome...

That is, everything except the main character.

This is the most egregious example I've seen of a movie with a lead character so wretched that they nearly bring the whole production down around them like a ruptured dam. Kristen Stewart gives a performance so wooden, so lifeless, and so uninterested that it becomes almost unwatchable any time she is on screen. She is a thumbtack in the tasty soup that is "Snow White & The Huntsman." She is the rat poison topping on the films otherwise delectable pizza. She is really is the worst actress in recent memory that I can think of, at least in mainstream Hollywood.

She just threw up in her mouth. She'll use that to convey emotion. She's not sure which one though, so she'll use it to convey ALL OF THEM.

But it wasn't only Stewart's terrible performance that I took issue with. My big issue was the character of Snow White herself, whom I will get to later.

"Snow White & The Huntsman" follows the classic story in a very loose fashion. Many of the basic ideas are still there, with an evil queen taking over the kingdom, and the princess Snow White is the only person who can stop her (more on THAT later). She escapes into exile and is helped by the 7 dwarfs, who join her in her fight to overthrow the queen. The Huntsman is a guy sent by the Queen to bring Snow White to her, but of course he betrays the Queen instantly because he can tell she's probably not the most scrupulous of people. Being an evil overlord of a country tends to lower the chances that people will trust you, after all.

The Queen is played by Charlize Theron, and my goodness, she is amazing. True, she acts hammier than a pig wrapped in bacon performing a Nicolas Cage monologue from "Deadfall," but there is something so intensely scary about her in this movie that she is probably the thing that people are going to remember most about it. One scene in particular that will serve for me as the quintessential moment for her character is the prerequisite monologue she gives during the final confrontation. As she is reviling in her own wickedness, she walks through a fire which begins burning her flesh, only to have it heal as she steps out again, like she's freaking Wolverine or something. It's an awesome effect in a movie with a lot of really good effects.

And mixed with the very well done backstory for the Queen, I had more emotional connection with her than I did for the blank slate that was Snow White.

Speaking of scary, Ian McShane, who is one of my favorite actors is also in "Snow White & The Huntsman," playing one of the dwarfs. I suppose he would be "Doc," although none of them have their old names. I honestly couldn't tell what any of their names were, however, since all of them were speaking in nearly undecipherable Scottish accents. There is a huge amount of talent among them, though. Aside from Ian McShane, Toby Jones, Ray Winstone, and the great Bob Hoskins, another one of my favorites, Nick Frost make up the cast of the dwarfs.

The effects used to make the dwarfs seem smaller also deserves mentioning as it was well done. I don't know if they used actually small people as stand ins or used CG to put the actor's faces over top of them, but it was all quite convincing. I was on the fence about the 7 dwarfs when I heard they were in this, but they ended up being the most enjoyable part of them film aside from Charlize Theron.

That is, until they gave Nick Frost and Ray Winstone a poop joke. Because that's dignified, especially during the climatic final battle scene. Nice timing there, movie.

Chris Hemsworth is also pretty sweet as the Huntsman, doing his best to channel his inner Colin Farrell. So overall the main cast is all quite good, of course with the exception of Stewart, and one other guy who deserves mentioning: Sam Spruell as Finn, the Queen's brother. Now, it's not that Spruell is necessarily bad, so to speak, it's just that...well, there's really no gentle way to say this so I guess I'm just going to have to come out and say it. He looks like Gary Busey dressed up as the Berries 'n Cream Lad.

Seriously, this is distracting.

With the cast being as overall strong as it is, the effects being quite well done, and the story being interesting and generally exciting, "Snow White & The Huntsman" is a pretty fun time, and it's really worth seeing just to see how much the movie does right. But that being said, now is the time I once again talk about the main character, and for once, I'm not going to talk about Kristen Stewart. This is talking about Snow White, and why I couldn't stand her as a character.

The problem with Snow White is that she is only exceptional because the story says she is exceptional. In this story, she is The Chosen One. She is the Kwisatz Haderach. She is Neo. She is any kind of messiah character you want to name. But the thing is, there is nothing exceptional about her besides that fact. And it's quite telling in the fact that she doesn't do one single solitary thing that any normal person couldn't have done (with one rather meaningless exception).

Most of the movie is simply Snow White being dragged around like a cardboard cutout or any kind of trophy you can name, while people struggle and fight and die around her, just so that she can make it. Her ascent to power is done on the backs of other people, without her doing much of anything besides showing up and going along for the ride.

And it's not like the movie didn't give them opportunity. I mentioned earlier the pointless scene were she does something special. It involves her going all Crocodile Dundee on a troll, because for some reason, possibly because it was in the Disney version, she has this spooky connection with animals. Now, do they actually do anything useful with that? Well, for that scene, yes, because she saves Chris Hemsworth's life, but at no point does that come back later. Why couldn't she have called on her animal friends to help in the final battle? A troll would have been a nice addition to their forces. But they don't do anything with the animals, which essentially makes that whole animal thing pointless.

 Hey, maybe you could use one of these things to fight for you. Just saying...

A perfect example of what I'm talking about is a scene early in the movie where a common peasant is captured and brought before the Queen. He manages to stab her in the stomach with a dagger, which she pulls out with no blood spilling from her wound. She is unharmed. Now spoiler alert here, but guess how Snow White kills the Queen? Take a guess.

She stabs her in the stomach with a dagger. Only this time, it works and she dies, simply because of the fact that it was Snow White that did it. This literally is the most significant thing that Snow White does in the entirety of the film, and some muddy backwoods hick did it an hour and a half earlier in the film. Only I guess he wasn't good enough for the movie.

This whole fatalistic view of the characters really rubs me the wrong way. It's so boring, and it's such a cop-out unless there is a character produced that is worthy of that predetermined destiny of "savior." It would be one thing if you told me that John McClane was destined to defeat Hans Gruber at Nakatomi Tower. It would be one thing if you told me that Conan was blessed by Crom to avenge himself against Tulsa Doom. Paul Atreides, Luke Skywalker, and even Harry Potter had a prophecy attached to them. And they all DID SOMETHING TO FULFILL IT.

Snow White just goes along for the ride and takes what everyone else says she should have. Just because the movie says she deserves it. What a crock of exceptionalist crap.

AND CLOSE YOUR DAMN MOUTH, YOU SLACK JAWED HACK!!!

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Snow White & The Huntsman" is not a bad movie, despite my complains about protagonists being worthy of the title of "main character." There is a lot in here to enjoy, and what it does well, it does very well. But be warned, if you can't stand Kristen Stewart, and recognize her for the blight on acting that she is, this will do nothing to change your mind about her. She nearly ruins the entire film. Nearly. It just goes to show how good the rest of it is when it manages to save itself from her awfulness. Recommended.