Jack: O Matador de Gigantes

While "The Ass-ylum" has become synonymous with poor quality film making and "Mockbusters" they really have plumbed the depths of crassness with this latest offering, their take on the "Jack and the beanstalk" story...

If you consider turning bad movies into drinking games please leave this one alone, you will be blind drunk before you get half way through this shambolic garbage...

What time period is this set in? You have modern helicopters and yet the police where Georgian uniforms, the army wear Dad's Army uniform cast offs and the absolute mismatch of props (Old Browning Camera Antiques et al) looks like they bought any old TAT from car boot sales in order to get props for this carbuncular waste of celluloid...

These people cannot even blame budget as an excuse, plenty of film makers have made much better and more entertaining movies with barely anything and as for the uniform gaffs fancy dress shops will hire out more convincing police uniforms...

As for the acting quality the amateur dramatic society known as "The Ass-ylum" somehow managed to cajole Ben Cross (Who in his time has done some real stinkers) into taking part in this debacle, I can only think that the negatives will be in the post Ben because I can only imagine that blackmail forced you into taking part in this monumentally bad garbage (I am sure your work on Banshee pays the bills)...

The rest of the cast are so cartoon like in their acting (Not that the cajoled Ben Cross is any better) that I have trouble wondering how the hell they got their "Equity Cards" to perform this steaming pile, maybe they are now handing out equity cards in cereal packets now?

What a sad state of affairs when Asylum (the makers of this sad little tale) throws out garbage like this with a cast of people who aren't even trained in the art of acting. Wow, they must have taken the directors wife and kid hostage to make him do it. One consolation, this film of inferior quality should only have taken a couple of weeks to throw together so no real harm done.

The story starts of with some Real Steal rip off material as Jack is fixing his robot (I know, lol...I don't remember Aliens style robots in any other version of Jack...Beanstalk before!) while struggling to say his lines and use his hands at the same time. lol yes, I remembered a classic bit of acting when we first see the ridiculous beanstalk in a field. There is a cop standing there with a very small crowd of people and he's right in front of them saying "nothing to see here, move along", I was like WTF! Nothing to see? Also the way he was holding this crowd of 4 people back was stupid. They are in a field and can stand anywhere but chose to all squeeze in front of the only cop there. Another thing is, when Jack gets nabbed by the tree branch thing and gets taken up in front of everyone. Not one person seems to notice it happening!! Garbage, garbage, garbage.

I don't do the "this is the worst film ever" speech because it's cliché and rarely true. I have to say though, it's damn close. The acting is atrocious, the editing looks like it was done by a crack addict badly needing a fix and the music, the mf'king music! Where in the hell did they dig it up from? It sounded a bit like those,(I'm not too sure of the name) Stylaphone? Is that the thing Rolf Harris used to advertise? Well, it sounded like that.

Not a film to be watched, even if your bored, drunk, high, low...in fact...just don't watch it. I did and I'm still queasy.

I knew it wasn't the Hollywood version. I saw it on Netflix and my daughter is in a 'giant' phase so thought to give it a try.

Dialogue is awful. Acting is awful. Army in charge guy is awful. Jack is awful. Costumes, props out of place. Cgi is awful. Decisions are illogical. Awful nonsense.

Basically, wannabe untalented actors starring in a film with no budget and a very poor script. Sure, why not and I hope they had fun but the end film is crap.

I've said all I needed to above and these extra lines are for padding to meet IMDBs review length requirement.

While I hate most of the Asylum's movies with a passion, I keep watching because there is something somewhat entertaining about their awfulness and also there's a glimmer of hope that they'd do something halfway tolerable. The Asylum oddly enough have made a few tolerable movies though the best they get is only decent. Jack the Giant Killer is not the worst from them, but it is still really bad. It looks amateurish from a starting point. Watching the costumes, sets and props I didn't and still don't have a clue about what time period the movie was supposed to be set in, and the laughable special effects(especially with some of the worst dinosaur, seemingly poor and personality-less substitutes for giants, effects I've seen for any movie) and editing that looks that someone was having a drug hallucination are no better. The music sounds weird, is not memorable in the slightest and doesn't fit at all. The dialogue is stilted and often sounded like senseless babbling with the actors clearly struggling to get their words out, it also has a lot of cheese and this is when the murky sound is not drowning it out too much. The story, aside from it having a complete lack of originality and borrowing heavily from the likes of Jurassic Park and Aliens, is a structurally thin bore that doesn't make sense or have any charm, fun, wonder, thrills or heart. In my mind, the attempt to mix a Grimms fairytale-like atmosphere with a quasi-modern twist also didn't gel. The characters are annoying and never developed, they're just there for the sake of it. The acting is poor, Jamie Atkins badly under-performs to the point that his performance is lost amidst everything else. Ben Cross and Jane March(who actually gives the movie's best performance) fare better but are severely under-used so while they try hard their characters just don't register and they don't bring much particularly new to them either. To conclude, not The Asylum's worst but has nothing to recommend it apart from perhaps Jane March's beauty. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Where do I start? Some movies ARE so bad they're good. I love cheesy movies and was in stitches for most of such classics as 'Killer Clowns from Outer Space', Megashark vs Giant Octopus', and 'Robot Jox'. This I did not love. It was annoying. I'm just not entirely sure why this was simply bad and not cheesy.

Awful acting, Awful plot (in fact, practically none), poor casting, poor direction, bad special effects. Actually, they weren't ALL bad - maybe the production was taken over seriously. Nope, that can't be it as it's already been pointed out the costumes and props were from entirely different time periods (CCTV cameras on walls anyone?)

I think it was simply a lack of care about any single part of the filmmaking process. It's like someone just stood in the street, shouted 'Who wants to make a film that's very loosely based on Jack and the Beanstalk', and the least interested people within earshot all inexplicably volunteered.

Don't watch this film (unless you're imminently dying and have nothing better to do when I guess it might actually make your remaining time feel longer)