Les voyages de Gulliver

In the latest Gulliver go round ( there have been at least a dozen variations since 1902) we have a production of enormous precise detail vividly brought alive by state of the art special effects, grand set design and lavish costuming all crushed by the uninspired casting of the slobbering one note buffoon Jack Black in the title role. In his pudgy mitts the Swiftian satire becomes another heavy handed, predictable goof ball routine of sly eyed impishness and soft hearted sweetness applied in the same manner as in the rest of his "zany" canon.

Lemuel Gulliver sets out for the Bermuda Triangle to prove himself as a journalist and to win the heart of the girl of his dreams. Blown off course by a raging tropical storm he finds himself on the the tiny island of the tiny people, Liliput. Gaining their trust he is soon the rage of the land improving infrastructure and counseling the lovelorn. All goes well until he is challenged by General Edward and is humiliated before all who look up to him. Can Gulliver redeem himself? What's more important is that the filmmakers have enough story to fill the second half with fun pyrotechnics.

Black's cuddly bear, man child grows more tiresome with each performance and in Gulliver it's lights out early with the same boorish routine the ubiquitous media gadfly projects whether playing a role or doing an interview. Director Rob Letterman's film does have a precious look and he does inject some nice Python humor here and there but it is all obscured by Black's beached whale of a Gulliver. For lazy parents looking for a baby sitter, the film might serve as that crazy and funny uncle that can occupy the kiddies for two hours. Make sure though you send them with an older sibling. Unlike this loser of a film it will be a win, win for you to abstain.

I've seen the version of the story starring Ted Danson, which was quite good. This is nothing like that.

Jack Black's Gulliver starts out in the real world of the present day, with a smart phone. That's all you really need to know about when this took place.

He's not happy with his life in the mail room, and he wants more. A relationship with travel writer Darcy, and more opportunities to do the real work of the New York Tribune.

The Internet makes things easy. When I was in high school and college, there was plagiarism, but it was more challenging because what we know today as the Internet didn't exist. Gulliver has an easy time impressing Darcy and gets sent to the Bermuda Triangle. Oh, so this is how it will work.

And it's actually a pretty exciting scene as Gulliver gets sent into another dimension. Then he has the experience that Danson had, only funnier. This version of the story, pretty much limited to Lilliput, will go for laughs.

And Lilliput is quite a complete nation, but with very small people compared to Gulliver. The castle where the royal family lives is huge. There is a city with lots of people, with varying ethnic backgrounds, and a countryside outside that city. And the Lilliputians have wars against other very small people from other nations.

Only after Gulliver shows his value in fighting a war is he treated with respect. He is a hero. And then things get quite silly. Every movie Gulliver has ever seen becomes a detail of his life, and pop culture references show up in abundance. We later see a giant R2D2 from "Star Wars", combined with "Transformers", used in battle, for example. All because Gulliver's plans for a video game become a fighting robot.

Meanwhile, the prisoner Horatio vies with the nasty Edward for the heart of Princess Mary. Horatio is released only because Gulliver is his friend.

There is one scene where Mary is kidnapped, and I'm not sure whether it is atrocious writing or atrocious acting. No, it's actually brilliant writing and good acting, because most of the acting in this movie is quite good. I mean for the material. It takes real effort to make the acting look really bad.

I am curious about one thing. Of course Gulliver loses cell phone service when he gets close to the Bermuda Triangle. How then is it possible he can receive the voice mails he missed--AFTER he crosses over? And these voice mails are quite important--if you think about it, there's an interesting plot twist coming.

The battle scenes are pretty impressive. I watch several CW super hero shows, and it's a lot like that. Even Horatio gets involved.

There is one cute scene in the world where everyone is big. It only has a little girl, who is quite big compared to Gulliver. Imagine what she would look like to Lilliputians.

And the movie has a big musical number which is quite well done. Again, it seems silly to have the entire cast performing a song Gulliver likes. Also, the music here is quite old compared to, say, a romantic comedy starring teenagers. It comes closer to what I like. Let's say that.

No, it doesn't rank as the most impressive of the productions based on the literary work. No, it is not literary work on its own. But it is enjoyable and somewhat well done. If you're the type of person who can enjoy Jack Black, you will probably like this.

Gulliver's Travels is fun, a fantasy, not taking itself seriously light comedy. You won't learn anything, you won't cry, you won't witness historic cinema in the making. You will spend an hour and a half watching an enjoyable family film that doesn't pretend to be anything more than a fun adaptation of an age old tale by Jonathan Swift.

I marked the film 7 because I enjoyed watching it, isn't that enough? Must everything be critiqued so much that we lose enchanting family films that just cheer us up momentarily.

Sometimes; Now this might upset the media studies students who seem to be taking over IMDb, sometimes I don't want to have to concentrate on plots and sub plots, sometimes I just want watch a film and escape for a bit, is that OK with you, must everything be Cannes fodder? If you want to have fun and watch a dumb romantic comedy watch Gulliver's Travels, if you're an over serious sneering sceptic... don't. It's that simple.

While some find this picture a waste of time, I think the problem lies in one's inability to open up and think 'What if?'. I found the picture entertaining. It's Jack Black doing what Jack does best - act like Jack Black.

Although the storyline could have taken a different twist and went a little more in depth, it was done well enough to capture an audience for a while.

One bit of overlooked trivia - Amanda Peet's character was named Darcy Silverman. She and Jack Black worked together in the past in a movie called- 'Saving Silverman'.

Regardless, it was not a bad day at the movies.

There is something brilliant about this project, something absolutely brilliant. You will find it hard to locate in the storm of distracting bad decisions elsewhere.

The bad? Well, you can read about that elsewhere. A cheap film factory and story meets the three Jack Black jokes.

The clever idea is this: Black plays a character who is a repressed nobody. In his own apartment, he acts out dramas from films with his collection of action figures. He goes to sleep, and dreams — maybe not because the fantasy doesn't need an explanation. He ends up in a land full of people the size of his action figures.

Once there, he tells them stories about himself drawn from all those movies, with him as the hero. They believe him of course. This is somewhat interesting. The brilliant part is how he inverts the inversion, by having the little people on stage reproducing scenes from the films with him as the hero. Later, they build him a replica of his real world as filtered through this lens.

The idea is pretty cool, and would have been worthy of something like "Synecdoche" and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

How this could have been spliced to Swift's original vision is too delicious. Swift was vulgar, offensive and unsettling in his truths. There is none of Swift here. I actually would have preferred seeing Travolta's Scientology disaster again rater than this. Cool idea though.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.