Gulliver's Travels

I have to admit, going into this movie I had certain not so flattering expectations. Why? Well, because I saw it had Jack Black in it. He tends to stick to a particular genre of movie; the kid friendly, crude humour rife one.

However, I was pleasantly surprised. The crude humour was pretty much limited to a single between the knees kick and while the movie is definitely very kid friendly, there were lots of little adult humour moments as well.

Gulliver’s Travels, directed by Rob Letterman and starring Jack Black as Lemuel Gulliver, is a modern twist on the old tale by Jonathan Swift. It’s rated PG, and CommonSenseMedia gives it a 9+ age rating for mild violence, sex, language, and consumerism.

In the movie, Lemuel Gulliver is a mail room guy with a hopeless crush on travel editor Darcy Silverman (Amanda Peet). After new guy Dan (T.J Miller) comes into the mailroom and gets promoted over him within a matter of days, Gulliver decides it’s time to take action in at least one area of his life; he decides it’s time to ask Darcy out. However, he ultimately chickens out and in a slippery slope like twist of events, he ends up telling her he wants to be a travel writer, and winning an assignment on the strength of a plagiarized writing sample (Which, as you’ve probably guessed, comes back to bite him later). Where is this assignment to? The Bermuda Triangle. Gulliver goes sailing out into the Triangle…and proceeds to get sucked via whirlpool into Lilliput, land of the little people.

This is around where all remaining semblance to the book ends. Several new characters are introduced: the psychotic General Edwards (Chris O’Dowd), lovestruck commoner Horatio (Jason Segel), and headstrong Princess Mary (Emily Blunt). Gulliver constructs his own fantasy land with the Lilliputians, all based on lies. They are more than willing to bow to his requests, because he’s helped them defeat their enemies; the Blefuscians. This is around where the adult humor moments start to sneak in, mostly in the form of pop culture references that’ll probably fly right over the kid’s heads, but the adults will appreciate. (A 'movie' about Gulliver’s life that’s an interesting mishmash of Star Wars and the Titanic, or simulated Guitar Hero with KISS caricatures, for example.)

Eventually, all good things must end. Gulliver is exposed as a liar, beat up by a robot, and condemned to the ‘Land Where We Dare Not Go’; the land of the big people. Gulliver spends a relatively short, though amusing time as a little girl’s doll there. However, soon Horatio comes to tell him that another human has washed up on the shores of Lilliput: an irate Darcy Silverman, who’s found out about Gulliver’s plagiarism and is attempting to do his assignment.

From there, it’s the typical journey of a boy saving his girl. It all works out, of course; Gulliver saves Lilliput, gets the girl, partakes in a sing and dance-along about the futility of war, and returns to a successful life.

Yes, a sing and dance-along. In one of the more…bizarre, yet oddly amusing scenes of the movie, Gulliver bursts out in song and the Lilliputians and Blefuscians (The other group of little people) dance and sing along with him. Everything is seemingly OK in their world after that; age-old dispute resolved.

This movie, overall, was well written. The cast of supporting characters that screenwriters Joe Stillman and Nicholas Stoller introduced into the story gave a bit more depth to this modern twist, adding some kid friendly elements where the original was more adult oriented. And of course, there were the requisite morals: you’re only as little as you make yourself, honesty is always the best policy, and so on. There was a nice thread of female empowerment in Princess Mary as well, which came out strongly at the end. In one of my favorite parts of the movie, she is kidnapped in a last ditch attempt by General Edwards and fights him off by herself rather nicely.

The cinematography, while not very experimental, did flawlessly maintain the size differences. Not once did the size ratio between Gulliver and the various sized people he encounters seem anything less than natural. And while there were no dazzling special effects, there didn’t really need to be any.

Overall, I’d give this movie a 7/10. And if you’re looking for a movie to take a younger sibling or kid to that you stand a chance of enjoying too, I’d highly recommend this one.