Jack and the Beanstalk (2009)

Purely Joyful Movie!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Captivating movie !

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Pretty much low-budget, but very entertaining. smart, witty parody on famous fairy-tales, full of cultured humor, without vulgarity and all those nasty things that suppose to be funny these days. Perfect for brain relaxation.8/10

So I caught this on Encore Family the other night and half way through I was wondering why I hadn't heard of this version of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' before this. It's draped in a slew of stars from Gilbert Gottfried to Chloë Grace Moretz as well as amazing cameos from Chevy Chase to Katey Sagal with James Earl Jones as the voice of the giant. Jack (played by Colin Ford in his debut film role) is an outcast at school, he doesn't quite fit in to the fairy tale sort of scene where his classmates like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming (Billy Unger) excel. On top of that he is dogged by the stigma of his absentee father who famously deserted his family and left them for poor. A chanced meeting with a mysterious shopkeeper changes the course of his life forever as he embarks on a journey of heroism, friendship and redemption. Christopher Lloyd co-stars.

You know how your granny complains that they never make nice films any more, that the whole family can sit down and watch? This was clearly designed by your granny, as something nice and old fashioned; the trouble is, I think the old bird's getting a bit senile.It goes like this: Jack lives in fairyland, where everything is a fairy story, and he wants to be a hero. But in order to do so, he has to go on a quest and learn about things like Sacrifice and Perseverance and I'm sorry I just can't go on. I just can't.It's not the clichéd plot that kills this movie. It's not even the hideous, explosion-in-a-cuteness-factory design of the sets. It's the acting, and the characters. They're just AWFUL. Jack himself is the kind of precocious brat who needs a good whack upside the head, but he's nothing compared to poor Christopher Lloyd, who is forced to explain every joke very slowly, over and over, as though he's speaking to an audience that's suffering from major brain damage. Lloyd is better than the frantically mugging Wallace Shawn, who plays multiple roles, all of them dreadful. Even that shameful performance is far, far better than Gilbert Gottfried, who is just insufferable as a human chicken. Did no one look at that character? Did no one think that maybe, just maybe, a movie with that horrible, screeching nincompoop at the centre of it might be a bad idea? The only cast member who comes out of this mess with any dignity intact is Chloe Moretz, who filmed this just before she went on to fame in Kick-Ass. I think it's safe to say she won't be putting this movie in her show reel, though.This is an old-fashioned family film, in all the wrong ways. It's far too twee and cloying for adults, and much too cutesy for kids who have been brought up on the harder edges of Pixar or Disney movies. There's never any sense of even slight danger, so that it's impossible for adults or kids to get involved in the film. I wouldn't recommend letting your kids see Kick-Ass, but there are a thousand better movies for them than this.

OK, so the first thing you would have noticed is that I did not give this movie a rating. This is because of the simple fact that there is not a rating that I could give low enough, that would even begin to represent how terrible this film is. It does not deserve to even be called a movie, and so for the remainder of this review, I will refer to it as an insult. Because that is what it is, I have never in my entire life, felt such an intense mixture of hatred, pity and embarrassment, like which I felt while watching this insult. Now I am not a professional movie critic, and to be honest I will probably never write another review on this site. But the fact that I actually felt compelled to go through the process of creating myself an IMDb account, just so I could write one for this, should be proof enough that I am telling the truth. This review might get negative comments or remarks, I may be called a fool, and it be said that I have no idea about what a good movie is, but at least I will have been heard. There was only one part in this insult, that gave me even the slightest amusement, though it came during a scene where I guess you were supposed to be feeling sad, when Jack found out that his father had died, and he breaks down into tears. But his acting, and I know he was a kid and it was his first production, but his face when he started crying was giving me the message that he was either constipated or was about to sneeze, and I actually laughed, in that strange feeling of anger and pity. But Colin Ford as Jack was not the only stand out role. There was the character of Grayson the goose, played by Gillbert Gottfried who's insistent and relentless reliance on lame pathetic jokes together with the most penetrating and aggravating voice create in my eyes, the most irritating and disgusting performance I have ever seen….EVER. I don't understand how people involved in productions such as this cannot see how absolutely terrible and pathetic their film is going to be before they make it. Everyone who had anything to do with this insult deserve to be captured and put down. How the director can live with himself after knowing how many lives he has ruined by creating this piece of sh** excuse for a movie, I don't know.The special effects were few and cheap, the giant and his minions were so poorly dubbed that I believe even a class of mentally disabled 2 year olds could have moved the mouths in better sync with the sound. The acting was disgusting, and the jokes……..the jokes were so incredibly, pathetically lame, that I actually felt that my intelligence was being frontally abused and insulted, whoever the writers were, whoever they were intending to entertain with their jokes, I can say only one thing……EPIC FAIL. It could be argued that its humour was aimed at young children, but i do enjoy good kids movies, and i can see how those movies would be funny to a child, but unfortunately, this is not the case. It will be a sad sad day when this is what is considered funny to children. If I had one wish in my lifetime, I would wish that this insult had never been spawned from the deepest darkest depths of hell, it is so bad, that it is in its self the cruelest act of torture. A creation of such evil, that it can bring out the worst in anyone, I believed myself a calm collected person, I used to pride myself on my tolerance and ability to not get angry. But once I copped this insult, I was filled with such an intense and unsatisfiable rage, that I felt I had to write this review and let it out. And I am hoping that by doing so, I can save you my friends from ever having to experience what I have. I have never in my entire life, felt such an unreal and pure hatred towards anything I have seen, read or heard. I would honestly prefer to sit through an entire Justin Bieber concert (that's right I said it) than see this again. I will not ever ever ever ever ever……..EVER, watch this again. Do yourself a favor my friends, heed my warning don't put yourself through it.