Gulliver’s Travels (2010)
Certified: U
Duration: 93 minutes
Directed by: Rob Letterman
Narrated by: Ozzy Osbourne
Starring: Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Jason Segel, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Catherine Tate
KRS release

Simply put, Gulliver’s Travels is a bag of fun for children. Jonathan Swift’s classic book has been loosely adapted and updated into a Jack Black vehicle.

Mr Black is a likeable actor and here fans of his will get more and more of him. Indeed, he will literally fill the screen as the eponymous giant in the land of the miniature-sized Lilliputians. In the vein of 1998’s Godzilla’s marketing campaign line of “Size Does Matter”, the saying also counts for this film, and even more so.

Jack Black is Lemuel Gulliver, 10 years a mail boy at a New York newspaper. He is a classic dropout. A slap in the face for him is the moment when Dan (T.J. Miller), still one day in the job, is promoted. This pushes him to try and actually do something with his life.

He decides to act on a crush he has had for years and ask the travel editor Darcy (Amanda Peet) out on a date. She misunderstands and believes he wants to write travel features. So Lemuel is soon despatched to the Bermuda Triangle.

Soon he ends up being siphoned into a tornado and lands in Lilliput where people are all between six or eight inches tall and he is a veritable giant. Here he meets King Theodore (Billy Connolly), his beautiful daughter Princess Mary (Emily Blunt) and the honourable peasant Horatio (Jason Segel) whom he soon befriends. Trouble ensues when the Lilliputians are betrayed by General Edward (Chris O’Dowd) to their enemies and war ensues. Meanwhile, Darcy has followed Lemuel and so the two are trapped in Lilliput and Gulliver must rise to the occasion and show he can be a hero too.

While the film relies a lot on special effects, it’s also due to Mr Black that the film shines in its comic touches and its absurdist approach. He presents quite a jovial and likeable figure and it is very hard not to like him even when he is indulging in some really bawdy and scenes. He is so full of life, though never going overboard with his performance.

Gulliver’s Travel’s is under the direction of Rob Letterman who, up till , had limited his direction to the animated feature genre with the likes of the hit films Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) and Shark Tale (2004). As he did with his foray into B-movie homage that was to be found in Monsters vs. Aliens, Mr Letterman does this again here by referencing many other films and pop culture icons in general during the film’s sometimes frenetically hilarious sequences. The lines that Mr Black is given to spout – especially all the lies he says – are simply spot on.

In the special effects sequences, the stand out has to be the way Jack Black’s Gulliver used his belly to deal with the enemy’s armada’s cannonball.

Jonathan Swift’s original tome was a fantasy but it was also imbued with many messages. This is also seen in this film version with a Lilliputian society dominated by rules, the pompous superiority of General Edward and even in the way different people are seen to have different needs. However, the movie is primarily made to be a fun outing so one never needs to read too much into this.

This is a film that, like its main protagonist,t seems to be without a care, which is more than welcome during this time of the year.

This New Year simply go large, Gulliver style!