Giant Jack Black in 3D! - ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ Review
First of all, I’ve never been one to automatically criticize
filmmakers for remaking classic films or adapting classic novels, and I’m
definitely not fool enough to get all high and mighty about a family film
leaving out a few details of one of the densest novels in English literature.
Gulliver’s adventures among the Lilliputians is only one chapter of the novel,
and by far the most popular for film and tv adaptation. Personally I’m still
waiting for someone to do something with Gulliver’s travels among the
intelligent talking horses known as Houyhnhnms. The way that chapter satirizes
a society it preceded by 300 years is staggering.
But that’s a story for another day. For now, suffice it to say that this is about as much a film adaptation of Swift’s novel as a mouse pad with a picture of Shakespeare on it is an adaptation of Hamlet. It’s an inoffensive romp generally strung along a flimsy structure of the original story, but your opinion of it will depend entirely on your feelings for the cast. Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, this is a Jack Black comedy aimed at kids and virtually nothing else.
Personally I like Jack Black, but I was also an English major and I loved the original novel, so I have mixed feelings about a movie that stands on the shoulders of a classic story and then spouts off 85 minutes of stupidity, despite starring an actor I like.
Gulliver (Black) is a lowly mailroom clerk for a travel publication who spends most of his time nursing a huge crush on Darcy (Amanda Peet), the travel editor. He plagiarizes a few writing samples and gets a job as a travel writer, and his first assignment, as must be the case with all beginning writers, is to debunk the Bermuda Triangle myth.
So yeah, not really starting off well, right? But let’s just keep the kids in mind, shall we? I was a kid once, and there was a time when I was totally fascinated with the Bermuda Triangle. Even now the disappearance of Flight 19 pushes my supernatural buttons. So it should come as little surprise that the movie starts off playing to that kind of young fascination.
As it turns out, the Bermuda Triangle is not only very real,
but is a doorway into the magical kingdom of the Lilluputians. Suddenly
Gulliver is no longer a nearly invisible schmuck devoid of social standing but
is instead a towering giant able to take command of all her surveys. You can
imagine his delight!
There is some trouble with an invading force known as the Befluscia, which threatens the peaceful world of the Lilliputians (and Gulliver’s reign), but expounding on the minute details of a movie that has already stripped any and all meaningful content from its original story is much like describing in intricate detail the ingredients of a microwave burrito.
Come on, it’s a microwave burrito, you already know pretty much how you’re gonna feel about it.
I didn’t completely hate the movie though. I can definitely
see the entertainment value for younger audience members, who will surely have
a good time, and the special effects are not entirely unimpressive. 
They’re
often little more than the old superimposing tricks used to create giants in
the movie that go back for decades, but the 3D technology is put to good use,
and at one point Gulliver takes an amusing trip to Brobdingnag, the land of the
giants where he’s the tiny one.
But even though it’s not bad family entertainment, Black’s screen presence just doesn’t mingle with the story. He stomps through the movie and across the screen so much that the content of the movie becomes almost meaningless, and I have to say that each new movie that comes along and deliberately dumbs down a literary classic does a huge disservice to future generations. I’ll admit that I only read the book because I had to, but if you compare entertainment like this to the entertainment the original novel provided for Swift’s 18th century audience, it’s hard not to notice how far we’ve fallen.
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