Nobody’s a nobody
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
Director: Rob Letterman
Cert. PG
Running time: 85 mins.
Jack Black, as always, plays his usual juvenile self in this modern update of the classic story.
Gulliver here is a lowly employee of a famous newspaper, who pretends to have an interest in travel writing to impress the woman he has his eye on. She sends him on a trip to the Bermuda Triangle, which transports him to the miniature land of Lilliput.
Bearing not much more than a passing resemblance to the Jonathan Swift novel, this Gulliver enjoys being a big shot for the first time in his life, boasting to his tiny new friends that back home he was known as ‘President the Awesome’. Simply put, purists of the source material will be outraged, whereas anyone wanting some simple laughs strung on a piece of feel good, light-hearted escapism will find themselves pleasantly amused.
The special effects are exceptionally convincing, and there is much fun to be had watching Black have a whale of a time interacting with the Lilliputians. There’s no complaining about his performance — you either like him or you don’t.
A couple of lightweight romantic sub-plots, hammed up to bursting point, are presumably included to entertain slightly older viewers; Emily Blunt does well as the mismatched Lilliputian Princess. What makes it easy to forgive much of the daft humour on display is the fact that, aside from the odd panto-esque gag, it is almost completely clean.
The moral of the story is that nobody is a nobody, however small they might feel, which is a perfectly well intentioned message, even if it is more than a little saccharine.
For a family-friendly trip to the cinema, you could do worse. The jokes keep coming and, although it’s all pretty obvious stuff, Black ensures that things remain generally likeable.
