Gulliver's Travels

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.

An adaptation of Swift's novel (which was one of my favourites when I was a child) that stars Jack Black and Amanda Peet! Wasn't going to miss this one. I have heard negative things about this movie so my expectations were low. Given that the book leaves plenty of room for imagination, I felt the movie lacked that. Much of it is contrived and there are plenty of plot holes. For example, the writers could have done a lot with the idea that Gulliver was banished to a forbidden land (of giants). Even the culture clash between modern day Gulliver and the Lilliputians felt forced and half-baked. How did these Lilliputians develop technology (that took hundred of years for humans) so rapidly. Was Gulliver, a guy who works at the mail, really that savvy? But anyway, the movie partially compensates its lack of substance and imagination with humour. Jack Black is always dependable when it comes to making the audience laugh. Amanda Peet has a small role but she makes the best of it and has good chemistry with Black. Jason Segel and Emily Blunt are adequate in non-demanding roles. Catherine Tate is wasted. Chris O'Dowd is passable as the traitor villain.

Needless to say, this is far from a great adaptation but thanks to Black, there was enough to laugh at. I suggest to keep expectations low.

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.

Saw this one in 3D. First thing you should know: there's no reason to pay the extra money for the 3D version as pretty much the coolest 3D stuff I saw that day (saw it last Saturday afternoon) was on the trailer of the new Transformers movie. Second thing you should know: I'm not familiar at all with the book or with any of the other movies. Maybe that's why I'm one of the few ones here in IMDb who gave more than 4 stars to this movie.

Anyway, there's really nothing amazing going on here. The story is as predictable as you can imagine and well, Jack Black is yet again playing Jack Black. We all knew this, and frankly I don't think there's a person who can't tell how is this movie going to be like before seeing it.

I knew, and went to see it anyways as it was pretty much *the* movie of 2010's Christmas. I mean, I'm a sucker for Jack Black movies and even though the trailer never really convinced me, I had to check it out. Maybe The School of Rock and the Tenacious D movie (big fan of both) were more than enough for the punk rock Jack Black but it seems is inevitable to have him "rocking". So here some references to Guitar Hero and KISS are present. Jack Black is put as a sucker for rock music and movies, Star Wars especially. That simple thing delivers the best moments of the movie: Gulliver making the Lilliputians act Stars Wars and Titanic and perform as KISS. It ain't pop culture references heaven but definitely delivers the goods (also some Avatar references were funny).

Gulliver's Travels may not be Jack Black's funniest movie, but in the end it was just what I expected: a decent family entertainment that will be soon forgotten but that is enjoyable to watch.