Susan Granger’s review of “Gulliver’s Travels” (20th Century-Fox)
Back in 1726, Jonathan Swift wrote an inventive novel that was supposed to be a scathing satire of that era’s social and political corruption but, somehow, it wound up as a staple of children’s libraries, and now it’s been updated into a silly, slapstick, contemporary parody aimed at tiny tots.
Lemuel Gulliver (Jack Black) is a shy mailroom clerk at a Manhattan newspaper who, for years, has secretly harbored a serious crush on the beautiful travel editor, Darcy Silverman (Amanda Peet). When a colleague challenges him into approaching her, instead of a date, she gives him a travel assignment that takes him into the Bermuda Triangle, where a storm sweeps him through an inter-dimensional portal washing him up on a beach in Lilliput, which resembles 18th century England. While the tiny Lilliputians are initially terrified of the huge shipwrecked sailor, referring to him as “The Beast,” he soon becomes their hero by battling the invading Blefuscians and extinguishing a potentially fatal fire in the palace by urinating on the flames. Acclaimed by the King (Billy Connolly) and Queen (Catherine Tate), Gulliver gleefully recounts tall tales of other zany adventures, culling from “Star Wars” and “Titanic,” among other pop-culture references. In a Cyrano do Bergerac subplot, Gulliver also comes to the aid of his ‘commoner’ friend Horatio (Jason Segal) who loves the island’s Princess Mary (Emily Blunt) who is being courted by pompous Gen. Edward (Chris O’Dowd).
Hastily and unnecessarily converted into 3-D, it was adapted by Joe Stillman and Nicholas Stoller and directed by Rob Letterman, whose previous experience has been in animation with “Shark Tale” and “Monsters vs. Aliens.” The physical comedy is derived from Jack Black’s dropping his pants and clowning about his grotesque size and the industrious Lilliputians’ beachfront re-creation of Manhattan’s Times Square to his ego-inflated specifications. Gulliver’s subsequent visit to the giant Brobdindnagians and discovery by Darcy are disappointingly anti-climactic.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Gulliver’s Travels” is a floundering 4, capped by a cast credit for someone aptly described as “Butt-crack” man.
