Beanstalk Reviews

Goofy in a juvenile, gag-me-with-a-spoon mode, BEANSTALK should delight youngsters with its broad slapstick and cornball in-jokes. In fact, jaded fairy tale fanciers of all ages should appreciate this comedy's hellzapoppin' approach to the timeless kiddie classic about greedy enterprise. Because his mom, Rebecca (Amy Stock-Poynton), toils tirelessly at a greasy spoon to meet mortgage payments, tycoon-wannabee Jack Taylor (J.D. Daniels) tape records his get-rich quick schemes for future reference. While Jack fends off a tubby bully named Danny (Patrick Renna), Rebecca Taylor tries to keep Leech (Richard Moll) from foreclosing on her home. Grasping financier Leech wants to buy up the entire town and rebuild it as a resort. Jack's luck changes when a box of colossal beans (dug up near skeletal remains of a giant) bounces off the back of the van of crypto-zoologist Dr. Winston (Margot Kidder), takes root overnight in the Taylor's backyard, and revives the town's economy as the giant beanstalk becomes a tourist attraction. Unhappy at the Taylors' good fortune, Leech lobbies to have the stalk pulled down. Needing money instantly, Jack climbs up the stalk, with nemesis Danny in hot pursuit. The boys encounter a bizarre family of giants stuck in a 1950s time warp. Once our little heroes are sniffed out, Papa Giant (Stuart Pankin) decides to prove their existence to the doubting big people of his world. Posing as dolls, popping out of a toaster, or hiding out in a huge roach motel, Jack and Danny barely escape capture. While Dr. Winston and Rebecca knock out Leech's security guards with sleeping gas to prevent their blasting the stalk to smithereens, Jack and Danny flee homeward. Tailed by the aggrieved giant, who subsequently enjoys terrorizing the tiny town below, Jack outsmarts him, scaring him back to the Land of the Original Big and Tall Men's Shops. Just after Leech is arrested for attempting to murder Danny and Jack in the stalk explosion, the towering stem is accidentally blown away. Safe on Earth, Rebecca and her son Jack contemplate ways to cash in by exploiting their story through the media. In Giant Land, Jack's gargantuan foe is delighted that Jack left behind a camera containing photographic proof that little people exist. Outrageously overacted and often clumsily staged for the camera, BEANSTALK coasts by on silly charm. This lampoon makes telling use of fairy tale inversions, anachronisms, and in-jokes (the giants' president is a dead-ringer for Richard Nixon). Setting this parody in the 1950s reaps comic benefits because that decade's conformity and dull sit-com behaviorism transforms the giants into large-scale playthings at the mercy of our baby boomer imaginations. Whenever some inane physical business (usually involving Dr. Winston) cloys, BEANSTALK redeems itself with some character eccentricity or some surprisingly sharp insult humor. For a film short on finesse, this sloppy spoof zips along painlessly to its conclusion. The presentation of giants'-eye versions of fabled events (like the David and Goliath episode) is also amusingly handled. BEANSTALK serves up comic relief by lobbing its jokes (good and bad ones) at a breakneck pace, and by remaining true to its own zany revisionism. (Mild violence and profanity.)