Jonathan Swift's 1726 epic Gulliver's Travels was a biting satire of 18th century humanity. 2010's Gulliver's Travels is a PG movie featuring a shirtless Jack Black.
Jack Black is a divisive figure. Many people utterly despise him, but I actually like a good portion of his work. Black has proven himself in dramatic films such as Margot at the Wedding, Jesus' Son, and High Fidelity in addition to comic ones like Topic Thunder and the underrated Saving Silverman (co-starring Gulliver's co-star Amanda Peet). I even felt his over-the-top performance as filmmaker Carl Denham in Peter Jackson's King Kong purposely contrasted nicely with Adrian Brody and Naomi Watts' devoted-to-the-theater characters. And Tenacious D rocks.
But I can understand people's complaints.
Now onto the subject of this piece: Gulliver's Travels. For this year's big family Christmas film (opening wide only against Coen Brothers' western True Grit and startling end to the comic trilogy Little Fockers), Gulliver's Travels has suffered from a lack of promotion. While television ads have finally started to run, it seems lacking for a movie of this side; compare the inundation of promotions for Yogi Bear to that for Gulliver's. Further calling into question the studio's faith in the film, it's opening on the Saturday, Christmas Day instead of the Wednesday prior, like Grit and Fockers. Gulliver's is also only opening in ~2,400 theaters. Grit and Fockers are opening in 3,000 and 3,450 theaters respectively, and this month's other big family film, Yogi Bear premiered on 3,515 screens last weekend. (All information taken from Box Office Guru.)
But this is all speculation. Onto the trailer.
From the trailer (and poster for that matter), it appears as though the only place Gulliver travels to is the land of Lilliput. An obvious selling point, as that is the dimension most people associate with Gulliver. Few fictional images have remained as iconic as tiny people tying down a giant man.
Sadly, unable to find Midget Bondage Pictures.
However, the title of the book and the film is Gulliver's Travels with an s, not Gulliver's Adventures in Lilliput. Gulliver enters several crazy dimensions like the one where people are bigger than Gulliver, the one with magicians, and Japan. Yet, with the exception of showing him as an incompetent loser in “real” life, the trailer focuses exclusively on Lilliput.
Could this just be one portion of the film? Possibly, yet doubtful. Gulliver seems to be doing a lot in Lilliput. He enters battles, develops Iron Man technology, he befriends the natives, he hooks Forgetting Sarah Marshall up with The Devil Wears Prada, he manages a Kiss cover band, and creates a performance of Star Wars to the delight of the Lilliputians.
(While we are on the subject, can we move on from Star Wars? I am a big fan of the original trilogy, like most people, but in recent years filmmakers appear to have become dependent on referencing the franchise. While it worked in Clerks (not so much in Clerks 2), over the past decade we've had television shows like Lost, How I Met Your Mother, Family Guy, and Robot Chicken devote several episodes to the series and movies like Fanboys, which was exclusively about seeing the films. That brief period in 2010 when geeks focused on Back to the Future was an amazing reprieve from having to hear another take on The Death Star. Now when will Plinkett get the damned Episode III review finished?)
Back to the review...
Another reason to doubt that the movie will expand from Lilliput is the other stars. After Jack Black, the two biggest actors in the film are Emily Blunt and Jason Segel, and they are Lilliputians. If this movie was to follow Gulliver through a number of crazy different lands, it would probably have equal (if not bigger) actors (no pun intended) to represent his other journeys. (Think of the impressive cast of the Night at the Museum movies.) As good as Segel and Blunt can be, it wouldn't be that difficult to have names and faces that are more recognizable and a bigger box office draw for a major family/children's film. If the film had better-known actors, it would promote them.
Additionally, what Gulliver does in Lilliput seems to be quite extensive. For the film to give the time necessary to cover each individual land, it would bloat to a length not suitable for a family/children's film. Right now, Gulliver's Travels is reportedly only an hour and 25 minutes long, including Super Credits (where the end titles run for ~7-10 minutes to make room for all the SFX people).
A COMMERCIAL ADDENDUM
First off, the ads proclaim that Gulliver enters an amazing 3D world. While technically true, also true is that all known worlds are 3D. The world he lived in before entering Lilliput is also 3D. Unless he's entering a cartoon, some place with time travel, or the Twilight Zone, of course it'll be a “3D world.”
Secondly, these commercials prove that Gulliver treks to another world by showing him as a “doll” in some child's dollhouse. While this scenario is in the book (although original Gulliver wasn't in a child's dollhouse; he was placed in a custom-built “traveling box” by a queen), one must wonder if this segment will be a major part of the film or if it will serve as some sort of "Here we go again...!" ending.
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