Gulliver's Travels is a giant flop saved by funny little moments

10 April 2012

Jack Black’s latest character starts out as a vaguely charming coward who has nowhere to go but sideways. Some might call this typecasting. Black has spent the past few years recycling past glories (all two of them: High Fidelity and School of Rock). In terms of creative potential, the stocky dude could definitely be mistaken for someone who has peaked.

Rob Letterman’s "update" of the Swift classic hardly stops the rot but the script has its moments.

Black is ageing slacker Lemuel Gulliver, who has been delivering the mail at a New York newspaper for way too long. Says a frowning Gulliver, as he reads the CV of a new recruit: "You were born in 1990. I didn’t think that was possible."

In an attempt to win the respect of travel editor Darcy (Amanda Peet), he sets off to the Bermuda Triangle and finds himself in a land populated by Olde Worlde "little" people. He starts re-enacting episodes from his life for the gullible royal family. He’s just stealing lines from Star Wars, Titanic and Avatar but they’re entranced. Soon they’re dressing like him and creating a modern city awash with his face and figure ...
Like Chauncey Gardiner in Being There, Gulliver is something of an empty vessel. Full to brimming with pop culture, he all too easily becomes a commodity himself.

The whole cast seem tickled by the conceit. Emily Blunt, especially, is wryness on legs as the kingdom’s princess. Chris O’Dowd (of The IT Crowd fame) is also pleasantly off-beat, channelling his inner Nigel Hawthorne to create sympathetic baddie Edward Edwardian.

Non-literate youngsters, meanwhile, may be surprised to discover that the scene in which Gulliver urinates on a building comes straight from Swift. What a gross-out pioneer! It would have been nice to see more examples of the author’s excremental vision. (In the book, while in Brobdingnag, Gulliver gets a close-up look at a breast tumour; the film is far too dainty to go there.) That said, Gulliver’s stay in a humongous doll’s house, owned by a bratty girl, does have a deliciously macabre moment.

Let’s be clear: Gulliver’s Travels has little visual panache, many foolish plot turns and an ending so pat it makes you want to slowly bang your head against a brick wall. But funny films are short on the ground and this one — which has already been dubbed a flop by US critics — deserves to be bigged up. Opens on Boxing Day.

Gulliver's Travels
Cert: PG

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