And bland is the new profitable.
Gulliver (Jack Black) is an ambitionless under-skilled slacker with zero prospects and a distinct lack of drive. So too is this god-awful film, which should be ashamed of itself.
The only thing smaller than the scale of the mini-men Gulliver encounters is the effort put into this drivel. Gulliver’s Travels was written in the lunchbreak of someone especially untalented, then churned out in a weekend off from a Tenacious D tour.
This is the kind of thing that should ruin careers, only the unfortunate truth is it will not.
Set in the present day, the afore-mentioned slacker Gulliver fluffs his way into a travel writing assignment in the dubious way only attempted by filmmakers who don’t care. This takes him to the Bermuda triangle where one insta-storm later finds him awakening in a strange land with diminutive Coke can sized individuals. Oh yeah, I should mention that this film is chock full of blatant product placement – you can’t pay Jack Black with goodwill.
The Lilliputians have a normal medieval heirachy with a King (Billy Connelly), a Princess (Emily Blunt), an over-zealous General (Chris O’Dowd) to dote on the Princess and the noble peasant named Horatio (Jason Segel) who can only dream of holding her hand.
Only O’Dowd gives more than a flickering effort to imbue his character with even a shred of individuality and interest.
Then it’s up to Jack Black to bring the funny, because there sure isn’t any to be had in the script. Consider the scene where he wees out a fire as exhibit A for the prosecution, though to be fair the inclusion of ‘jokes’ that demand Gulliver lying to the locals about his true past by reciting the Star Wars and Titanic plots and then quoting Prince lyrics are damning in and of themselves.
Final Rating – 3.5 / 10. I couldn’t hate this more if I found out it was directed by Rob Schneider and that all profits went to funding the beating of baby seals. It should be a stake to the heart of the career of all involved.
But by all means; feed your children Jack…
