Back in 1996, Ted Danson starred in a TV movie of Gulliver’s Travels to mixed success. As a TV movie goes it wasn’t bad. Compared to the 2010 version starring Jack Black it looks like sheer genius. When an actor has established himself as the wacky family-friendly comedian (even in the face of a separate, much dirtier comic presence), he gets offered projects with large paychecks and little merit. Some comedians are smart enough to sift through the junk and pick out the projects that actually have some substance, even if the money isn’t as good. Jack Black isn’t that man. Jack Black should have passed on Gulliver’s Travels. In fact, the whole of this surprisingly great cast should have passed on this film, because nothing about it has any redeeming value.
Playing the usual schlub with no prospects, Jack Black plays Lemuel Gulliver, a lowly mailroom clerk incapable of standing up for himself and furthering his professional prospects. After lying his way into a travel writing gig from his boss Darcy (Amanda Peet), Gulliver hops aboard a small boat and gets sucked into another world where he’s a giant in a kingdom of little people led by generous Theodore (Billy Connolly), with an indecisive princess (Emily Blunt), her lovestruck amour Horatio (Jason Segel), and the power-hungry General Edward (Chris O’Dowd). Gulliver’s giant size allow him to serve as their protector against an invading enemy, and in the time of peace he helps nurture the romance between Horatio and the Princess as a sinister plot mounts underfoot.
Normally there’d be something to redeem the film like direction, the script, a few performances, or something. Even the smallest thing. It’s just not here. It’s as if someone wrote 30 minutes worth of story to sandwich around 50 minutes of Jack Black goofing off as himself in a world where he’s a giant. Nicholas Stoller proved himself a great director with Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but he proved a less capable writer with Get Him to the Greek, and if you pair that talent with Joe Stillman, the man who gave us the painfully unfunny Planet 51 - that Gulliver's Travels is an unfunny mess starts to make sense. Maybe that wasn’t director Rob Letterman’s intention in directing Gulliver’s Travels, but that’s what this turned into.
Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Chris O’Dowd, and T.J. Miller all have terrific comedic timing when they’re given the chance to play it out, but Letterman has created a film where every delivery is corny, every joke falls flat, and all that talent goes to waste. Jason Segel has proven himself to be on the level of Paul Rudd and others as a funny leading man, able to convey that everyman sensibility and get pretty much every audience to sympathize with him. He does that here, but it’s overpowered by Black’s unending insistence that rocking out with an air guitar and being a surprisingly limber large man are the funniest forms of comedy. Similarly, Peet’s great deadpan style and Billy Connolly’s swarthiness never have a chance to carry their weight and potentially save the film.
Instead, we’re left with a comedy that doesn’t know where it wants to go and thus goes nowhere but into Jack Black’s overused bag of tricks. If someone could explain to me how this is a different plot from School of Rock, I’d appreciate it, but it can’t be done. Jack Black is the same character getting in over his head and then having an epiphany and some minor personal growth that saves the day and puts out the fires that his carefree antics set.
Considering the entire film is Jack Black greenscreened as a giant into a world of his much more capable, albeit smaller peers, the film doesn’t look bad. Consequently, as often as not the actors look like they’re staring into a void as they act, but considering all the lines they’re delivering are horrifically unfunny it never makes much of a difference.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
For such an irredeemably bad film, Fox went all out padding the disc with featurettes. Once you’ve burned through a decent gag reel and some worthless deleted scenes, you can “enjoy” featurettes ranging from specials dedicated to the cast talking about their characters, the CG technology used to create a tall Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians, the creation of certain set pieces (like the foosball scene), and Jack Black’s antics throughout the film. A minor plus, the combo pack includes the film on Blu-ray, DVD, and as a digital copy download.
"Gulliver's Travels" is on sale April 19, 2011 and is rated PG. Adventure, Comedy. Directed by Rob Letterman. Written by Joe Stillman and Nicholas Stoller. Starring Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Emily Blunt, Jack Black, Jason Segel, T J Miller, Chris Odowd.
