Bryan Singer is generally accepted as an excellent director, right? Early on in his career, he helmed one of Hollywood’s most memorable mysteries in The Usual Suspects, permanently placing the name of Keyser Soze amongst the great all-time movie villains. Later, he became the hero to comic geeks everywhere when he directed both X-Men and its sequel X2, based on the popular superhero team. He also helped create one of the more endearing and potentially enduring Sherlock Holmes clones in producing the television series House, which ran for eight seasons. These projects made him in the previous decade what we praise Christopher Nolan or Joss Whedon as today. Although his last two movies (Superman Returns and Valkyrie) were much more modestly received by audiences and critics, his name still brings up fond memories of the past, and hope for excellence in the future.Unfortunately, Jack the Giant Slayer is neither justification of that faith nor a particularly good movie at all. Based on the popular fairy tales of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, Jack is another attempt to popularize alternate versions of such stories, similar to the recent Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. Unlike the very violent, very adult-oriented Tommy Wirkola movie however, Jack the Giant Slayer desperately wants to be your family friend. It even changed its name from the blunter Jack the Giant Killer during its troubled and lengthy production, which began way back in 2005. The final product cost over $200 million to make and market, and you can see where every single dollar was spent.In a medieval time, Jack (Nicholas Hoult) is a common farm boy who doesn’t really take his real-world responsibilities as seriously as he does the make-believe stories his father used to tell him at night. On what starts as a typical day, Jack’s actions cause an enormous beanstalk to extend from the human world to the land of Giants, cannibalistic monsters who forever ago waged war on mankind. He also accidentally allows the King’s daughter (Eleanor Tomlinson) to be captured, and as repentance he volunteers to accompany brave knights in climbing into the heavens and rescuing the young woman from unknown dangers. But the princess’ betrothed has a devious plan, one that involves controlling the Giants and using them to rule the world. In the end, it’s up to quiet, unassuming Jack to set things back to the way they belong.First things first: Jack the Giant Slayer, though not very exciting, is a fairly pretty movie. Singer obviously decided to (and in most places, had to) artificially generate every visual thrill he could get away with. But while Michael Bay or Brad Bird possess the ability to spend gobs on cash in order to create impressive visuals, Singer proves that more money spent isn’t necessarily money well spent. With the exception of the gi-normeous beanstalk, there really isn’t all that much here that's truly visually impressive. While the design of the Giants occasionally stands out (a few look unique enough), far more noticeable is how cartoonish they appear, especially up close. This was obviously a conscious effort to make them more friendly to younger audiences, but doesn’t quite work when they are regularly shown crunching their teeth down on some poor sod. The casual mix of violence and humor wasn’t conceived particularly well; it's a sure-fire indicator of distraction on the part of the filmmakers. Sure, the visuals are as nice as they can be when you film actors against a green screen, but the effort is hardly worthy of the story it’s attached to.And that story is where Jack loses any charm it might have possessed. Whereas Warm Bodies (a recent, excellent Nicholas Hoult outing) took a tired, cliché-ridden genre (oh, look, another zombie apocalypse) and altered it just enough to become something wholly unique, Jack the Giant Slayer takes a simple fairy tale and… stretches it a bit. Despite the going up the beanstalk, the getting back down and the fighting off an army of hefty-sized enemies, there just doesn’t seem to be all that much happening. Even the admittedly-imperfect Hansel and Gretel made ample use of heavy alterations to the source material, and the added violence helped separate it from its children’s story origins. Apparently Singer and crew simply brought all the usual tropes out of storage and cobbled them together. Character development is nonexistent, though there are at least a few standouts in the crowd.Hoult, who shows off his acting chops in Warm Bodies, merely relies on his not-especially-considerable charm here. He’s likeable but not interesting; we don't really bother to root for his success. Moreover, his chemistry with costar Eleanor Tomlinson (who plays the painfully typical princess in need of rescue) is nonexistent, derailing any special attachment you might have developed towards them. Ian McShane is also a disappointment, playing the serious King of the land with his heavily dramatic side at the expense of any humor. Eddie Marsan (as a particularly greasy knight) and Ewen Bremmer (as a conniving sidekick) are barely used. Still, there's some good work: though playing a one-note villain (with all his typical goals), Stanley Tucci succeeds in hamming up his performance in the finely-tuned spirit of Snidely Whiplash. And Ewan McGregor excels as an overconfident knight with perfectly-coiffed hair. But the performance of the night belongs to a CGI creature, with Fallon, the leader of the Giants, being a double-headed monstrosity voiced by both Bill Nighy and John Kassir (the Crypt Keeper, for those of his fans out there). In a movie that needed these creatures to be more than decent special effects in order to work, Nighy and Kassir do an admirable job setting up their end of the bargain, even if almost everything else fell short.At this point we might have to reconsider whether or not Bryan Singer deserves the “Elite Director” status so many fans have given him. He hasn’t had a truly great movie in almost a decade, and his sudden reclaiming of the X-Men franchise from Matthew Vaughn doesn’t quite as exciting as it might have before Superman Returns. Sure, everybody misses the mark at one point or other, but Jack the Giant Slayer is more effects-heavy, story-light and just plain bad than the 2012 SFX flop that many critics are comparing it to, John Carter. That movie was at least fun. There’s almost nothing to like here, and there's nothing distinctive: Singer does nothing to justify his presence on such a high-risk, low-ceiling production. This one had all the makings of a potential cult classic, but it collapses under the weight of its compounded errors. Jack the Giant Slayer isn’t even worth the eventual DVD rental, a shame considering the sheer volume of talent involved in its making. John C. Anderson is a freelance writer and movie enthusiast living in Boston. His film reviews can be regularly found at Hello, Mr. Anderson… just in case you were interested.