Les voyages de Gulliver

Just throw any negative comments you read here from IMD comment contributors in the wastebasket. I don't know what they were smoking.

Gulliver's Travels is beautiful! It is just as beautiful now as it was 60-plus years ago when it premiered, perhaps even moreso with the wonderful restoration we have now on DVD. This film doesn't have to compete with anything by Disney, and I don't see how this story has anything to do with Snow White. It stands on its own two feet as a captivating and charming classic story that children can enjoy over and over again, made when animation was really animation, and all the cells were handpainted by artists, instead of slopped together on boring, cookie-cutter computer models.

The storyline is perfect and has an anti-war undertone that was a bit daring for its time, made on the eve of World War Two. Even Disney's Snow White didn't have the guts to do that! So kudos to the Fleischer Brothers!

The songs are all wonderful and the soundtrack sounds marvellously enhanced on the new DVD version. "We're All Together Now", "All's Well", "It's A Hap Hap Happy Day", "Bluebirds In The Moonlight", and especially the haunting "Come Home Again, Sailor Man" are all perfect and flow into the action of the film, instead of being placed there with no relevance just to try and get a hit song. These sheet music pieces always sell well on Ebay, highlighting the fact quite clearly that this is one of the most beloved animation movies of all time.

"Gulliver's Travels" is one of the great animated features of its' time. It was made as a response to Disney's wildly successful "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Today, "Gulliver's Travels" is not accorded the same respect as the Disney pictures and is pretty much forgotten.

Why? This is as good as "Snow White". After all, it was made by the Fleischer brothers, contemporaries of animation and in my opinion, geniuses. They made the 17 classic Superman shorts that still spellbind people today, including myself. They made those classic 20 minute plus Popeye shorts. Betty Boop, Grampy, Screen Songs, Little Lulu, Gabby (spawned from this feature) the list goes on. Famous Studios was one of the most prolific animation studios of its' time.

While purists may complain that it doesn't stay faithful to the book, I think the changes are appropriate. What kid would understand Swift's social satire? What adult would really want to see a wholly faithful cartoon of the book. Besides, we have the 1996 epic film with Ted Danson to go to with accuracy.

The songs are surprisingly great considering how some can be overkill in a film like this. The characters are endearing and the story is solid and involving. What more could you ask for?

**** out of 4 stars

Lemuel Gulliver, his ship wrecked in a fantastic storm, washes ashore on the island of Lilliput, inhabited by people so tiny that Gulliver is a giant in their eyes. Soon Gulliver finds himself entangled in a war between Lilliput and neighboring Blefuscu, all brought about because the two kings of these lands couldn't decide which song was to be sung at the wedding of their two beloved children, who happen to be deeply in love with one another.

The animation is often breathtaking here especially when it focuses on the fairytale like romance between Prince David and Princess Glory. Unfortunately we never fully learn their back story or get to see much of them at all except when it's absolutely necessary to advance the plot. The rotoscoping process used for Gulliver is also fascinating to watch both in terms of its historical significance and the interesting visual impression of realism it creates on screen.

However Jonathan Swift's satirical story is almost completely sacrificed here in favor of fairytale fantasy which arguably borrows more from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet than it does Gulliver's Travels. Its main focus also is on the wrong character, a town crier named Gabby who isn't particularly appealing to the viewer. Too many of the other far more interesting and fun characters get sacrificed to make room for him. Actually the best fun here comes the two kings and their interactions with one another not to mention the hijinks that goes on between Belfuscu spies Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch. Gulliver himself is reduced to friendly giant peacemaker. Prince David does get a great moment towards the end. Of course, it would have had far more impact of the viewer was actually made to care about him.

I've seen this many times over the years, and it's one of my absolute favorites. Some folks seem to think the Fleischers have to take a back seat to Disney.

NOT !!

They were, in many instances ( such as this one), far more inventive than Disney, and their work did not lose touch with common emotions,and had broad-based appeal to all ages, despite technical complexity.

Mickey Mouse will never go off the air. But neither will Betty Boop or Popeye.

In its own special way, "Gulliver's Travels" rivals the Disney features with its complexity, and its lack of laziness. If you really look at it, and keep in mind that this is animation done by hand...the old fashioned way, you will have a keener appreciation for the hard work that went into it. In those days, Disney and the Fleischers had to run the studios like a factory. It took teams of men in units and working shifts to concentrate on just the movements of the characters to make them appear lifelike (not like the computer animation of to-day, or even the TV animation of UPA or Hanna-Barbera in the 1950s).

"Roto-scoping", a process invented by the Fleischers, made the task that much more daunting. But the Fleischers had to be "perfectionists/masochists". The love of their craft shows in the movements, the backgrounds, the stories, and the music...not to mention the characters.

I am truly taken with the score. It is warm and dreamy and romantic....tearful to some. Some folks can't get with it, but it's a shame we don't don't hear much real music like that anymore in the mainstream.

Win Sharples and Victor Young did a very fine job...one of the best of All cartoon scores. Work on this film appears to have gotten Win Sharples the scoring job for the Fleischers, one he held down after the Fleischers were given the gate by Paramount, and which he continued to hold until Famous Studios was padlocked.

I can't recommend this feature highly enough. It's good clean fun, an accurate character study, terrific music, animation...the "whole nine".

The Fleischer studios were best known for their "Popeye" and "Superman" shorts, but the caliber of animation and story-telling in this 1939 feature-length film were on a par with Disney at that time. Had they not gone bankrupt in 1942, I suspect they would have surpassed Disney in many ways.

The idea here was to do Disney's "Snow White" one better, and they came very, very close. The restored edition on DVD shows the depth and beauty of the artwork to perfection. Fleischer was even perfecting a "stereo-optic" process to add 3-dimensional depth to their images which was used in this film to good effect. The music is typical of the period, rather sugary for today's tastes, and the "Gabby" character introduced in this movie isn't nearly as funny as they seemed to think at the time. (Two "Gabby" shorts are also included on the DVD; draw your own conclusions.)

I can only guess at the reactions of movie-goers who first saw this film in 1939, but I suspect that they were blown away by the sheer scope of the artwork. Gulliver is a "man-mountain" to the Lilliputians, and the scale and perspective between him and the "tiny people" is perfect throughout the film. The sequence where the tiny townspeople use a variety of skills to truss up the sleeping "giant" and cart him (literally!) to their king's palace is, by itself, worth the price of the entire movie.

The pacing is a bit slow during the first part of the film, but the filmmakers do a nice job of setting up the conflict between the two tiny kingdoms, which (true to the spirit of Swift's story) is caused by the pride of the rival kings. I would've preferred less "Gabby" in this sequence, but I understand they were trying to establish a new character to compete with the Mouse.

If you like good animation, you will enjoy this DVD.