I like to focus on the positive. So let’s just accept the table stakes that Gulliver’s Travels is awful, beyond redemption. Take a look at the trailer if you like. See what I mean? There exists the barest of Wikipedia connections to Jonathan Swift's classic, muddled with lowest common denominator jokes and safe family hokum. There are, thankfully, a few things about this movie that aren’t quite as lifeless as they would appear in the clip.
Slipping through the mediocrity machine are a few nifty steampunk designs, some funny banter moments between Billy Connolly and Jason Segel and, at random intervals, some nifty special effects. The big surprise is Chris O’Dowd, an Irish actor I know nothing about who steals the show as the villain, General Edward. Everyone I saw the movie with (and many hated it a lot more than I did) agreed that he came out of nowhere and was terrific. He’s got something of a young Val Kilmer look with some Johnny Depp snark, if that makes any sense, and I am officially excited to see whatever he’s got coming next.
Sadly, I thought that was the case with director Rob Letterman. I enjoyed last year’s animated film Monsters vs. Aliens. He shows no directing ability here, letting his lead buffoon Jack Black make a giant-sized ass of himself, strutting about as yet another Guitar Hero-obsessed man child. It is a tired, nails-on-chalkboard performance that makes Year One look good by comparison, and almost makes me retroactively dislike the highlight of his career, School of Rock.
Also worrisome is that co-screenwriting credit goes to Nicholas Stoller (whose Get Him To The Greek I adore) in that this is the man who has his finger on the button of the forthcoming Muppets film. If this is the way he treats family-friendly comedy, we’re in trouble.
I saw the picture with plenty of kids in the audience and even they seemed bored by the end. The urine jokes, the butt jokes, the belly jokes, pretending to be Prince – they went over fine, I suppose, but even they knew they were cheap laughs. They were fidgety by the end, completely unengaged by the story. And heaven knows the adults weren’t digging it.
Such is the wonder of the post-film afterglow (and the benefit of low expectations) that I’m much more forgiving in my InstaReview. As an exercise in psychology, I include it below.
