If superhero tales are our modern-day big screen myths, fairytale adventures like Snow White and the Huntsman and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters are attempting to run a certain zeitgeist side game, blending fantasy folk legend with a decidedly contemporary appetite for action swashbuckling, albeit of the sword-and-crossbow variety. Peddling pat celebrations of valor and perseverance, but marked by distressingly humdrum characterizations, director Bryan Singer‘s Jack the Giant Slayer arrives as a piece of showcase entertainment for the continued advancement of in particular facial motion-capture, putting its characters through an effects-laden steeplechase that squeezes out some synthetic bedazzlement unattached to much in the way of deep or transportive feeling. Nicholas Hoult, so great in the recent Warm Bodies, acquits himself here, but he has chemistry with Eleanor Tomlinson that can be described as lukewarm at best. Ewan McGregor, Ian McShane and Stanley Tucci, meanwhile, seem hedged in by the prescribed functionality of their characters. All in all, Jack tames, rather than slays. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 114 minutes)
