Hour One Hour Two Hour Three Hour Four
What if the fairy tale were true?
And what if it were four hours long? And what if it starred Matthew Modine and Vanessa Redgrave? What would you do then, huh, smart guy? Betcha never thought of that one.
Jim Henson’s Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story is the amazing story of a really pretty guy who doesn’t know anything. He’s really cute and rich and everybody seems to like him a whole bunch, but he’s pretty clueless, and nobody ever tells him what’s going on. There. That’s Hour One.
Seriously. That’s about it.
But now I have a whole column to write about it, so here goes. Jack is played by Matthew Modine, a pretty movie star with really nice hair. In an early scene, we see him with a tight T-shirt walking on a treadmill, and he’s all muscly and lit in a warm, golden glow, so he looks like he’s made out of alabaster and Toll House cookies. That — and my responsibility to you, my reading public — are the two things that keep me going through this whole hour. Cause basically nothing happens.
Well, one thing is that there’s giant bones in the ground underneath this big house that Jack owns, only it’s in England and he’s American for some reason. More on that later. The mansion is in a little English village, and Jack’s company is digging up what is essentially the mansion’s front yard so they can build a big casino.
Anyway, there’s giant bones. We find out about them in Minute One, during the opening credits. Jack finds out about them in Minute Thirty-Nine.
In the intervening thirty-eight minutes, basically Jack just wanders around looking lost, asking vague questions that nobody answers. Jack is surrounded by quippy character actors, each with a different accent. Some have German accents. Some have English accents. One has a Texas drawl; one has a Midwestern twang. One has a French accent, but when Jack asks her about it, she says it isn’t a French accent. Everybody gets an accent except for Jack. Apparently, Jack was raised in England by German people, so he grew up speaking Hollywood.
The plot basically goes like this. Vanessa Redgrave sits in a chair. Jack’s company digs up some bones. Jack has a dream about his father’s death. He wakes up and goes to a board meeting. He asks why the casino construction has stopped, but nobody tells him anything. He tries to have a business meeting, but he’s interrupted by a weird-eyed waif who stares at him in an unsettling way. He asks her what her problem is, but she doesn’t tell him anything. Vanessa Redgrave is still sitting in a chair. Jack sits around in his apartment and sulks, then gets a fax. He still doesn’t know what’s going on, so he flies to England.
Jack tries to drive to the mansion, but there’s a big protest there so he drives away. He goes to the village pub, where he meets the weird waif girl again. She makes a lot of vague accusations, and it takes a whole five minute scene before she finally realizes that he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Then she disappears. Thirty-seven minutes in, Jack is still walking around asking questions like, What are you talking about? and What did they dig up? and What’s going on?
Finally, they show Jack the big giant skeleton that we’ve known about the whole dang time. And then he has the dream about his father’s death again, and Vanessa Redgrave is STILL sitting in that chair.
Fifty-one minutes into the show, Jack goes to see Vanessa, who’s supposed to explain everything. Vanessa says, “There are forces at play here that I do not fully understand.” And Jack says, “Forces at play?” And that pretty much wraps up the first hour.
Hour One Hour Two Hour Three Hour Four
by Danny Horn
