I used to watch the "Abbott and Costello" movies a lot when I was younger, particularly the Universal Monster crossovers. For the first time in probably thirty years I watched this one recently - it was a little disappointing, I have to admit.
Whilst reading a story to a boy he's babysitting for, Jack (Lou Costello) leaps into the world of Jack and the Beanstalk. Struggling for food, Jack sell's his family cow to Mr Dinkelpuss (Bud Abbott), the town butcher, in return for some magic beans. Planting the beans, they grow into a massive beanstalk, that reaches all the way up to the castle of the fearsome giant (Buddy Baer) who has been plundering the town and has kidnapped both the Princess (Shaye Cogan) and her betrothed Prince Arthur (James Alexander). Jack and Mr Dinkelpuss climb the stalk, with the aim of getting at the Giant's treasure and rescuing the couple.
I appreciate that it was only ever going to be gentle family-friendly comedy, but even so this feels underneath my recollection of those slapstick farces that I watched in my youth. I'm not sure the colour helps, I get that it's to work as a gentle parody of "The Wizard Of Oz" but the colour work here (at least on the dvd I've seen) was much more gaudy than It needed to be. There's some decent moments, such as the animation integration on the beanstalk scenes - the eggs with gunpowder in them works well and the wordplay is occasionally amusing.
The giant is a disappointment though, I'm not expecting full CGI creatures, but they could have kept him in shadow and superimposed him into scenes, and made him truly a giant. The physical comedy at the end of the film is a bit of an anti-climax and the individual romance songs are poor, though the ensemble ones in the village are a bit better, but there the dancers there are strikingly terrible. The Irish harp too doesn't add much to the plot and could have been dropped.
I need to revisit a few more of their films, but I won't be back to "Jack and the Beanstalk" in a hurry.
Whilst reading a story to a boy he's babysitting for, Jack (Lou Costello) leaps into the world of Jack and the Beanstalk. Struggling for food, Jack sell's his family cow to Mr Dinkelpuss (Bud Abbott), the town butcher, in return for some magic beans. Planting the beans, they grow into a massive beanstalk, that reaches all the way up to the castle of the fearsome giant (Buddy Baer) who has been plundering the town and has kidnapped both the Princess (Shaye Cogan) and her betrothed Prince Arthur (James Alexander). Jack and Mr Dinkelpuss climb the stalk, with the aim of getting at the Giant's treasure and rescuing the couple.
I appreciate that it was only ever going to be gentle family-friendly comedy, but even so this feels underneath my recollection of those slapstick farces that I watched in my youth. I'm not sure the colour helps, I get that it's to work as a gentle parody of "The Wizard Of Oz" but the colour work here (at least on the dvd I've seen) was much more gaudy than It needed to be. There's some decent moments, such as the animation integration on the beanstalk scenes - the eggs with gunpowder in them works well and the wordplay is occasionally amusing.
The giant is a disappointment though, I'm not expecting full CGI creatures, but they could have kept him in shadow and superimposed him into scenes, and made him truly a giant. The physical comedy at the end of the film is a bit of an anti-climax and the individual romance songs are poor, though the ensemble ones in the village are a bit better, but there the dancers there are strikingly terrible. The Irish harp too doesn't add much to the plot and could have been dropped.
I need to revisit a few more of their films, but I won't be back to "Jack and the Beanstalk" in a hurry.