JACK THE GIANT SLAYER (12A, 114 MINS)

By introducing a convoluted backstory in a prologue that echoes Lord of the Rings, the simple fairy story of Jack and the Beanstalk is bulked up here into a dour and unwieldy action adventure about a race of giants trapped between heaven and earth, and a kingdom on the ground that fears they may return one day.

The magic beans, and the stalk which springs from them, remain from the story, with Jack (Nicholas Hoult) a poor farmer who trades them for his horse with a monk who stole the beans from Stanley Tucci's treacherous royal. He's betrothed to the princess, and has dug the beans up as part of some dastardly and confused plan. The princess runs away, making it to Jack's house just as the beanstalk to the giants' kingdom shoots skyward, taking them with it.

Famous faces continue to pop up, with Ian McShane as the king, and Ewan McGregor as his top soldier in charge of finding the princess, though he should perhaps worry more about whether he or Tucci has the silliest accent.

Traditional fairytales have struggled in a post-Shrek world, even if dressed up with $200m worth of special effects like this one is. But that's no excuse for storytelling this lame, with a script that offers not a single interesting scene, woeful dialogue and a hokey, second hand mythology.

The crying shame of it is seeing a once vital director like Bryan Singer lost in something this lumpy and ill-conceived, with very frequent off-screen dialogue evidence of a messy production. In fairness, the giants are very well done, but once again, for that money, they should be, and they allow for one or two flashes of impressive moments.

But for the most part, Jack the Giant Slayer is a pallid adventure, offering little in the way of excitement or fun and often no better than a pantomime, yet much too violent for youngsters. And just when you think it's petered out and everyone can go home, the realisation that what appeared to be the climax was a decoy and that there's still half an hour to go is just salt in the wound.

THE CROODS (U, 99 MINS)

 

Far from skulking in Pixar's shadow like they did for most of the Noughties, Dreamworks Animation have upped their game considerably in recent years thanks to the likes of Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon.

But while Pixar have had to face one or two recent blips, Dreamworks have also taken a backwards step with their latest, The Croods, as flat and unengaging an animated comedy as a major production company has made in years.

The Croods of the title are a cave-dwelling prehistoric family in a harsh and unforgiving world, where every day is a struggle to eat and not be eaten. Dad Grug (Nicolas Cage) hammers home the message of danger and how no good can come of anything new, and is obsessed with keeping them all safe in their cave.

Daughter Eep (Emma Stone) is going through a teen rebel stage and longs for some fun, which happens along when she meets Guy (Ryan Reynolds), who claims the world is ending and that they need to get to high ground.

Outwith the setup of a story that's both strained and lacking in any real hook, many elements seem added at random. When their cave is destroyed the Croods end up in a strange and colourful new world that owes a lot to Avatar, but makes little sense in most other regards.

The voices are lively, which is something, but most decent animations should have the voices as icing rather than the best thing about it. And the animation is stunning, no two ways about it. But there's never any sense of wonder, despite all the colour and scale and pyrotechnics.

And the largely charmless story is a road to nowhere. Thematically it's thin, its main concern about parents letting go and kids growing up anything but new. Chaotic, and lacking any immediate appeal from either characters or plot, The Croods is little more than an awful lot of running and bouncing and falling for no real reward.

 

 

IDENTITY THIEF (15, 111 MINS)

Jason Bateman's put-upon office worker has his life turned upside down when Melissa McCarthy's career fraudster steals his identity, racking up thousands on his credit card and leaving him with no option but to try to track her down and bring her in.

This frequently ends up in the pair grappling and fighting, an early sign of the nastiness that pervades this rather unappealing comedy. It does calm down after a bit, turning into a still fairly frantic road movie, albeit one which includes gangsters and a bounty hunter on their trail. Midnight Run can't help but be recalled at this point, which this most certainly isn't.

Yet between McCarthy's energy and Bateman's laconic likeability, the pair certainly have chops, so you'd think some laughs would be forthcoming. But everything around them is dead air, with the tone frequently misjudged and inconsistent as it tries to demonstrate a soft centre to dilute the meanness of spirit.

STOLEN (12A, 96 MINS)

Nicolas Cage's latest cash-in is a howlingly silly crime thriller that sees the once bankable star playing a master thief who ends up in jail after a job gone wrong.

Eight years later he's out and looking to reconnect with his teenage daughter, when his wronged former partner (Josh Lucas) kidnaps her, demanding a share of the missing $10m from their botched heist.

Cue multiple scenes of Cage bumbling around New Orleans on Mardi Gras, while a feeble script chucks in body parts from all sorts of sources, from his and director Simon West's own Con Air to The Fugitive.

It's pretty tired stuff, even though Cage is reasonably watchable and Danny Huston has fun as the Fed on his trail, but Stolen is the kind of film where the audience is always two steps ahead of the writer, and where a man who has been in prison for eight years can work an FBI computer but doesn't know what sat-nav is.