Fee-fi-fo-fun! Singer has cleverly re-interpreted the fairy tale saving Jack’s reputation.
Let’s face it, in the original fairy tale Jack is a thief and a killer. He is living with his widowed mother and their only means of income is a cow. When this cow stops giving milk, Jack is sent to the market to sell it. On the way to the market he meets an old man
Jack takes the beans but when he arrives home without money, his mother becomes furious and throws the beans out the window. As Jack sleeps, the beans grow into a gigantic beanstalk. Jack climbs the beanstalk and arrives in a land high up in the sky where he follows a road to a house, which is the home of a giant. He enters the house and asks the giant’s wife for food. She gives him food, but the giant returns and senses that a human is nearby:
Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive, or be he dead,
I’ll have his bones to grind my bread.
The story portrays a “hero” unscrupulously hiding in a man’s house, playing on his wife’s sympathies in order to rob and finally murder the owner of the house who was minding his own business.
So, how did Singer and co-screenwriters Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie, and Dan Studney make this tale more PC? They did an incredibly tactful re-dressing of Jack – they dumped the coins and the hen that laid the golden eggs! Well, Jack does steal an egg – but maybe he was only borrowing it and intended to bring it back after show-and-tell at the village tavern in the Singer-McQuarrie et al version.
Sure the giants are CGI but they were fun and well done. I absolutely loved the tree and the magnificent design of the world of the giants. I loved Hoult in the current WARM BODIES where he had to act. Tucci is always a hoot (he loves physically transforming himself) and McGregor had the sexiest costume. Tomlinson – who was photographed to look 10 years older than Jack – failed to make a strong impression but that may have been the screenplay’s fault.
I would see JACK again just for the wonderful production, direction, and terrific soundtrack.
Jack still has one bean left.
Victoria Alexander is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association: www.bfca.org/ and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society: www.lvfcs.org/. Victoria’s weekly column, “The Devil’s Hammer,” is posted every Monday. http://www.fromthebalcony.com/editorials.php.
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