Apparently Americans are relatively unaware
of what a pantomime is so let's explain... Every Christmas, theatrical
productions of classic fairytales are opened to the public in which shit actors
take their careers to die. Primarily, these things are aimed at kids but also
often include smutty jokes for the adults that have been dragged along too.
Because there's nothing a kid loves more than not understanding a reference to
anal sex. The shows are kind of like a cross between one of the Grimm's
Fairytales, a Carry On film
and a brain haemorrhage. I actually went to one of these at the end of last
year starring none other than the famous singer Sonia!!! Well actually- I say
famous.. I mean I'd never heard of her but she was definitely in it because I
remember her being seriously fucking awful. Not that it is a bad thing by the
way. No- well, yeah it's definitely a bad thing but pantomimes are always shit
and so if you're going to see one, you want to make sure it's proper dire. The
worse the show is, the more embarrassing it is for the people on stage, the
funnier it is for me. I'm going back again next year but to make the whole
process even more amusing I plan to arrive with plenty of munchies and
completely stoned off my tits.
Anyway so I recently watched Jack the
Giant Slayer which tells the story of a young boy who swaps his horse for
some magic beans. Jack meets a girl, the beans get wet, a giant stalk shoots up
and suddenly he's able to travel into a sky-world of giants. So basically just
your stereotypical sexual awakening I guess. Sadly though, the girl gets
carried up into this world and so requires rescuing... because as any old
sexist will tell you, women are useless and rely on men to help them out.
Because she also happens to be a Princess, quite a few men go to her rescue
including Jack, some soldiers and an untrustworthy Stanley Tucci who intends to
bring the giants back down with him to take over our kingdom. That's pretty
much all there is to it really as this has already become the odd film out of
director Bryan Singer’s filmography. From the director of The Usual
Suspects, X-Men and Superman Returns comes a reasonably silly,
child-friendly film that's about as unmemorable and hollow as the average
persons head. I'm generally not a fan of people so if Tucci wants giants to
come down and smash us all to bits then I'm honestly not too fucked about it.
When I hear a film is directed by Singer
and written by McQuarrie I tend to expect something special that might redefine
a genre as I race to the cinema to spunk away my cash. The first X-Men wasn't
perfect but I still loved it and there's no denying that it was an integral
element regarding the recent explosion of Superhero blockbusters. On the
outside, X-Men was a film about people with special powers but
underneath was obviously about prejudice of any kind with its sequel even
including a 'coming out' scene. It's quite surprising then to see that Jack the
Giant Slayer really is about fuck all more than the title suggests. Do you
want to see some ugly tall people get killed in variously comical ways? Then
this is probably the film for you!
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| "Anyway, tonight's speeches are fucking cancelled. Nurse your fucking wounds." |
I think Jack the Giant Slayer is
roughly just under two hours long and if I'm being honest I was proper titty-bored
by the first half hour. I went in expecting a Bryan Singer film but what I got
was some bog standard American bullshit with stilted dialogue, a contrived set
up and a fairly standard look to the world. However before the disappointment
infected too much of my body, Ian McShane turned up as the king and he was
dressed like an absolute knob-end. It was at that point that everything
suddenly clicked for me. By coincidence, I'm actually re-watching Deadwood right
now where his gritty, nuanced and just generally fucking brilliant portrayal of
Al Swearengen may be one of the greatest performances I've ever seen. So to see
him go from that to wearing tight golden armour, a cloak that looks like a
hernia and generally just being as camp as a row of tents was kind of shocking.
Only now did I realise that this film is basically just a bigger budget and all
star version of one of those shitty old pantomimes that I explained about
earlier!
So Ian McShane mincing about whilst dressed
as a fucking plum was my original clue and of course the story is an obvious
choice for a pantomime but there are a few other signs as well. Firstly the
lead character played by Nicholas Hoult is about as much fun as trying to piss
a stray pube down the toilet... It's not that he wasn't good, it's just that
it's such a copy and paste farmboy-esque character that in terms of
memorability, he lingers as briefly as a fart in the wind. I mean I do like
Hoult in other things and he did his best here considering what little there
was to work with but as a main character, he's just Luke Skywalker without the
incest. However.. having a boring main character is kind of the done thing with
pantos as usually it's the villain who gets all the 'funny' lines. This is
certainly true of this film too with Stanley Tucci continuing his campaign of
being one of the funniest actors who isn't actually a comedian. At the show I
went to last Christmas, an example of the villains comedic lines which he
shouted at the audience was, “I'll come down there and paint all your
M&M's the same colour”. Like I said, pantomimes are very shit. Plus if he
shouts that again next year when I've got the full blown munchies then there's
a good chance that I'll pull a whitey and glass the fucker. To the credit of Jack
the Giant Slayer... it might not be the best film of all time but there
were moments were Stanley Tucci was certainly much funnier than that.
Another thing that got me to catch on to
the panto connection was the use of one of the most clichéd lines in cinema
history. One of my huge movie pet peeves is when somebody’s looking into the
distance before something bad happens and they say “There's a storm coming”. I
know that the storm is metaphorical of some upcoming 'trouble' but presumably
when they say it they're unaware of their place within the films narrative
structure and so are literally just referring to the storm. In which case other
than a bedraggled old sea-dog, who the fuck says “There's a storm coming”? If I
see a grey cloud then at best I'll just say “This weather's looking a bit shit”
and that's if I even bother to comment at all. If somebody paid me to write
films.. which they fucking should.. I'd still have a scene where our hero's
existentially contemplate their uncertain future whilst staring at the
horizon.. that's all fine.. but this time I'd have one turn to the other and
both meaningfully and stoically ask “Is it just me or is it going to piss down?”...
anything for originality! Anyway- rant aside, that's not actually the line in
the movie but you get my point. The line in the film is when Hoult tries to act
heroically, thinks its working and then realises there's an army behind him. To
which he says “There's something behind me isn't there” and with that, the
record was broken for the most times a shit joke has even been said on camera.
The first time he said it I felt a large
part of my soul die of cringe-tumours... however when the joke was used again
at the end of the film, I got it. I mentioned before that at the panto I attended,
the villain shouted out to the crowd because at these shows audience
participation is very much a part of it. They have stock phrases that come up
time and time again to partly make it more fun and presumably to drag the
crappy show out a few extra minutes. One example of a panto phrase is when the
character on the stage is about to be knifed in the back of the head by the
villain... or something slightly more child-friendly... to which the audience
shouts out, “He's behind you”. I'm therefore giving Jack the Giant Slayer a
huge benefit of the doubt and hoping to fuck that their use of that
ball-achingly awful line was a reference to these shitty stage shows. Using it
once would perhaps be a tenuous connection but to use it twice must surely
suggest a link because, if not, that's too depressing to actually contemplate.
Plus this is the second paragraph I've now dedicated to that phrase and clearly
I have an angle on this blog so for the sake of my point let's say we all agree
it's definitely a reference to the real pantomimes and just move the fuck on!
 |
| "Is that tagline being rude?" |
So both the real shows and this film are
inspired by fairytales, feature boring main characters, a funnier villain,
generally camp acting, catchphrases and... innuendos! To be fair the movie from
what I can remember didn't feature too many unsubtly hidden, rude jokes... but
the tagline does kind of allude to swearing. “You think
you know the story. You don’t know Jack.”...Hurrhurr it's funny coz it made me
fink da word 'shit'... although to be fair I did think it was pretty funny and
it did make me think of the word shit. The only issue with it as a teaser is
that if you think you know this story then to be honest you probably do. It's
formulaic to the point of agony but again that's also true of pantos. If the
film has one problem... which it doesn't- it has fucking loads... but if it did
have only one problem it would be that it is neither great nor shit. Jack the
Giant Slayer is a thoroughly average movie which will kill a couple of
hours in the most harmless way possible. It's not as fun as sleeping with
another real human but nor is it as boring as being stuck in a lift whilst
needing a piss. If you've got nothing better to do then I'd happily say it's
worth checking out but there are so many more films that are so much better. Is
this the best film in the world? All together now, “OH NO IT ISN'T”... No it
really fucking isn't but it's still good so whatever, see it, don't see, I
don't care. Bye!
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