Gulliver’s Travels (*½)
Directed by: Rob Letterman
Starring: Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Jason Segel, Amanda Peet, T.J.
Miller, Billy Connolly, Chris O’Dowd, Catherine Tate
Seen: January 29th 2011
*½ Out of ****
Black is the New Big? If I had seen this tag-line before seeing the
movie I would have skipped it on principle alone. Having seen it I can’t say
that I’m happy either, because it’s the first possible contender for 2011’s
worst. After Year One I was definitely not expecting a masterpiece, but logic
dictated that this had to at the very least be better than that low-point for
Jack Black, and while yes, it was better, it wasn’t better by much.
Jack Black can at times get the comic effect just right, and then you
get something akin to Nacho Libre, a fantastic little comedy that I recommend a
million times before giving this one the head’s up. But lately he pretty much
gets it wrong. The humour is flawed in every way, as the jokes are apparently
aimed at no one. Adults won’t find this infantile comedy the least bit funny,
and kids won’t necessarily appreciate it or should even be seeing it – a comedic
catch-22 if you will then.
I haven’t read the original Jonathan Swift novel, and I have no
reference of what the story is about, but I know that this movie borrowed names,
both human and locations, and the main framework idea from the original; and
chucked the rest… Lemuel Gulliver (Black) is the loser who never rises out of
the mail room, even Dan (Miller), the new employee in the mailroom, gets
promoted past him in one day. He is in love with the travel editor at the New
York newspaper he works for, Darcy Silverman (Peet), but can’t muster up the
courage to ask her out, instead opting to volunteer for a writing assignment in
the Bermuda triangle. He gets on a boat and is almost instantly flushed away to
the world of Lilliput, where everyone is 3 inches tall. They call him beast and
he tells them all the movie stories he can remember, building himself up as a
massive hero.
He saves Lilliput, temporarily, from the Blefuscians, and thus wins
the approval of the King (Connolly), Queen (Tate) and Princess Mary (Blunt),
but General Edward (O’Dowd) does not see eye to eye with him. Edward does all
he can to embarrass/expose Gulliver, and as the story arc in this kind of movie
invariably goes, he finds a way. Gulliver bumbles his way through some stock
standard situations with ridiculously stupid actions – example: putting out a
fire by pissing on it, and then on the King, and then on General Edward. And not
subtly, no, this is big yellow streams hitting the actors – complete loss of appetite,
check.
Gulliver’s Travels is ridiculously dumb with minimal truly funny
moments, and Jack Black is on a slow decline with movies like this and Year
One. Rather save your money then, for something better.
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