Jonathan Swift's 1726 epic Gulliver's Travels was a biting satire of 18thcentury 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.
Golden Globe nominations were released today and, as always, there were surprises and snubs. Especially heinous was the Best Motion Picture- Comedy/Musical category. The nominees were...
a. ALICE IN WONDERLAND b. BURLESQUE c. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT d. RED e. THE TOURIST
This list remains especially curious, not just because practically none of the movies were, by any stretch, good but because most of them are neither comedy nor musicals. However, now knowing what the Hollywood Foreign Press was looking for, a few replacement suggestions.
Alice in Wonderland- if Tim Burton's Lord of the Rings-ripoff take on Alice in Wonderlandcan be nominated, then why not disappointing sequel Iron Man 2, the yet-to-be-seen Tron Legacy, and the effective beginning-of-the-end Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1? At least with the latter people didn't leave the theater asking, “have the filmmakers ever actually read Harry Potter?”
Burlesque- if the almost universally despised Cher/Christina Aguilera rags-to-riches, Rochelle, Rochelle taleBurlesque earned a nomination, then Get Him to The Greek and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World ought to have been considered. Music played a major role in both of those films and they were actually good and funny. For that matter, why not Country Strong? Aren't they supposed to fawn over Gwyneth Paltrow and dramas where “real” actors sing?
The Kids Are All Right- I can understand this one, but why not Greenberg? At least nominate Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig for their pitch perfect performances of awkward losers lost in the world.
Red- The best thing I can say about Red is that it was bland and forgettable. Of the multitude of team-on-a-mission movies that came out in 2010, only one was actually good and genuinely funny: the dreadfully underappreciated, Jeffrey Dean Morgan-led The Losers
The Tourist- If the universally despised The Tourist can be nominated for best comedy/musical than this category should be open for Coen Brothers western True Grit, lackluster conclusion to the Millennium trilogy The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, Mark Romanek's tale of living a meaningless existence in dystopian Britain Never Let Me Go, and Ryan Reynolds claustrophobic thriller Buried.
The Oscars refuse to acknowledge real-yet-fake comedy songs. In the past several years, a number of comedy films have presented that which can probably best be considered satirical original songs. Examples of such movies include School of Rock, the underrated Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and Tenacious D and The Pick of Destiny.
These are not spoof/parody songs. Many are actually quite decent, both technically and lyrically. A lot can stand alone on their own, without any connection to the movies from whence they came. Yet the Academy Awards never nominates these tunes for Best Original Song, preferring instead to honor Disney themes, additional ditties to “official” musicals, and soulless dirges.
Oddly enough, real-yet-fake dramatic songs often win these awards. Last year, “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart beat its opponents and, in 2005, “its Hard Out Here For a Pimp” earned Hustle and Flow a statute. Yet satirical original songs, while often just as representative of their respective genres as the previous two songs, lack similar acclaim.
Although the Academy loves to nominate musicals across all categories, the comedy musical also gets no respect. Admittedly, the comedy musical (or, more aptly the comedy-that-happens-to-be-a-musical) is a rare breed. And South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut received a nod for “Blame Canada” in 1999. (Of course, there was a big public push behind that film getting a nomination.) But six years after the fact, does anyone remember the songs from The Motorcycle Diaries, The Chorus, The Phantom of the Opera, The Polar Express, and Shrek 2 that the Oscars chose in place of every single song from Trey Parker and Matt Stone's excellent 2004 follow-up Team America: World Police? The film responsible for “Everyone Has Aids,” “Freedom Isn't Free,” “I'm So Ronery,” and “America: Fuck Yeah!”
For sake of comparison, this was the winner that year...
Which brings us to 2010. Yes, it has been a terrible year for movies but Get Him To The Greek actually had a decent soundtrack consisting of original songs from Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). One of the movie's centerpieces was the Infant Sorrow frontman's nearly career-killing “African Child.”
Although “African Child” is a funny song, it's not a goofy one; it's a satirical piece mocking self-important musicians. Several Get Him To The Greek songs work on their own, without a blatantly humorous element, with styles ranging from rock
to ballad.
The true scene-stealer in Get Him To The Greek was not Sean Combs (as many claimed), but Rose Byrne as pop princess, Suzie Q. The star of mostly depressing fare like Damages, Sunshine, and 28 Days Later, Rose Byrneshowed off her rarely seen (but very impressive) comedic side with songs like “Supertight”
and “Ring 'Round.”
Serving as a take on modern, sexually charged pop music, Q's songs highlight the movie's strengths possibly better than any of Aldous Snow's.
The Oscars have a long-standing tradition of nominating satirical movies and satirical scripts, but not satirical songs. Get Him To The Greek's soundtrack deserves acknowledgment, and hopefully begins a trend towards the Oscars finally recognizing those tunes that combine music, lyrics, and comedy.
Recently, NBC announced plans to turn its Thursday night line-up into 3 straight hours of comedy, following the massive failure of The non-Celebrity Apprentice. Time to look at the upcoming line-up.
Community (8:00 PM)
Since the original mission of this blog was to concentrate solely on the negative, there is not much to say about Community. It's the funniest show on network television and is constantly innovative, surprising, unpredictable, and hysterical.
Perfect Couples (8:30 PM) - New Show
Starring The Waitress from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Olivia Munn, the lesbian triple agent from Flash Forward, and the Hot Guy from 100 Questions (more on that show later), Perfect Couples is the new mid-season comedy coming soon on NBC. According to the official website, “Perfect Couples depicts the misadventures of three engaging couples as they struggle to find out what makes the ideal relationship - and how to maintain it through humorous trial and error.” There's a normal couple, a high drama/high passion couple, and a perfect couple.
It sounds like it belongs on CBS.
Details about the show are lacking at this point, but it seems a betrayal of the uniqueness and freshness offered by the other comedies on NBC. And, Perfect Couples sounds perfectly suited for a ubiquitous Laugh Track, which the other shows wisely avoid.
Of the five other shows that have made up the NBC Thursday line-up over the past couple of years (six if we're including My Name Is Earl and seven if you want to include the short-lived Kath and Kim), none concentrated on “the relationship.” While characters in all of those series loved and lost, romantic entanglements were but one aspect to those series, and never the centerpiece. As important as Jim and Pam's courtship is to The Office's success, it was never the sole focus (although at times it felt to be).
Besides, if NBC was devoted to this type of show, they should have just kept 100 Questions.
More on that later...
The Office (9:00 PM)
Almost canceled after its first season, The Office has become NBC's flagship show for Thursday nights. With the highest ratings and most public recognition, this American take on the British classic is the sun around which the rest of the lineup orbits. Whether this will continue when star Steve Carell (who plays boss Michael Scott) leaves for greener pastures next season remains to be seen.
However, maybe Carell leaving will provide the show with the shot in the arm it needs. Over the past couple of seasons, this once quirky and charming mockumentary on the modern office environment has strayed dangerously close to sitcom territory, with many of the characters either losing their charm or becoming one-dimensional caricatures. Other problems include scene-stealers like Creed and hipster douche Ryan suffering from a dire lack of screen time, and new secretary Erin constantly forced to walk the line between adorable and retarded.
The recent episode The Christening highlighted many of the show's problems. While The Office has regularly taken us out of the office and often strains credibility about where the camera crew would go (why would they follow Pam to school in New York?), it was never as bizarre as the episode featuring the christening of Jim and Pam's child. Why would the entire staff be at a Christening for the child of co-workers they barely seem to like early on a Sunday morning? Early. On a Sunday Morning.
At least the episode Andy's Play earlier this season, about Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) co-starring in a local production about Sweeney Todd, can be somewhat rationalized because it was after work, not early on a weekend. Although the end of episode sing-a-long with the Sabre/Dunder Mifflin employees was a bit disconcerting. Remember, these people do not like each other. (And, while we're on the subject, enough with showcasing Ed Helms' song-and-dance abilities. It seems like every other episode features another musical rendition of something or other by Ed Helms.)
Back to the topic. The Christening episode ended with yet another Michael Scott hissy fit where he jumps on a bus to Mexico with a youth/young adult group with Andy in tow before they decide to abandon ship and return back home. The showrunners have developed quite the problem in finding the balance between a pitiful-yet-likable Michael Scott and pitiful-yet-annoying character.
While hashing out complaints about The Office, there's also Jim Halpert. When the show started, apathetic salesman Jim (John Krasinski) was the most relatable guy on the show. He was miserable in work, miserable in love, and overall miserable in life. The job at Dunder-Mifflin was just a job, but he did not seem to have anything else going on for him and, besides Pam, he didn't have any dreams or aspirations.
Since then, Jim received numerous promotions within the company, became the best salesman in the branch (he reached his commission cap in the latest episode), got the girl, got the wife, got the baby. He went from the lazy guy who had nothing to the guy who has it all, yet still suffers from a lack of passion/interest. Originally, Jim was an outsider who rebelled against the system in minor ways- pranks, jokes, sarcastic looks at the camera, etc.- but now he has become part of the machine, even his recently attempts to alleviate boredom seem to lack the pleasure and creativity that made the character appealing. While I am all for character growth and completely understand that when people get married and have children they tend to settle down, the arc sapped Jim of the qualities that made him a leading man/co-leading man at the show's inception and replaced them with nothing.
To give an idea about what to expect in this big final Carell season, the next new episode on December 2nd, contains this plot description. “After reading an article about China growing as a global power, Michael (Golden Globe winner Steve Carell) decides China must be stopped before they take over the US.”
The South Park Did it Already
Parks and Recreation (9:30)
After a first very shaky season, Parks and Recreation returned for its second season in September 2009 with a series leaps and bounds beyond its first six episodes. Originally accused of being a The Office ripoff, the second season of Parks and Recreation presented remarkably deep characters that engaged in unexpectedly intelligent, honest conversations. As low-key, small-government-loving director of the Parks department, Nick Offerman's Ron Swanson (with sax playing alter ego Duke Silver) emerged as a truly great television character.
So NBC axed it for the first half of the 2010-2011 season.
30 Rock (10:00 PM)
Despite its reliance on celebrity guest stars, 30 Rock remains a strong player in the Thursday night line-up. Is it better than Community or Parks and Recreation? No, but it is a steady performer. However, as the show wraps up its fifth season, Kenneth needs to own NBC or everyone should be dead by his hands.
Outsourced (10:30 PM)
The latest edition to the Thursday night line-up is Outsourced. Based on a 2004 movie, Outsourced is an oddly-paced (its reliance on broad humor makes the show feel like it needs a laugh track, yet its lack of timing seems more suited to a dramedy) series about Todd (Ben Rappaport), the American manager in an Indian call center for a company that sells novelty goods. Todd is also ridiculously unlikeable, creepy, and comes across as just about every bad boss in a Lifetime Original Movie.
The best I can figure is that Todd is supposed to be charming and a decent person. However, due mostly to Rappaport's performance, he comes across as a worse human being than David Cross' hapless pathological liar Todd Margaret.Of course, having a dick for a lead character is not necessarily a bad thing. In Community, Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) is a vain, self-involved douchebag, but it is who he is. The other characters acknowledge it, he admits it, and it works. Similarly, in The Office, Michael Scott is a bit of an oblivious asshole but his incompetence is belied by his patheticness and, through Carell's performance, the sense that he generally means well.
Todd has none of the qualities that make those two characters work. He's scummy, and although he seems to think that he's a good person, you never get the sense that he means well. Condescending and self-centered, Todd seems to have zero interest or care in the foreign exotic culture his job thrust him into. He regularly gets annoyed when his employees won't conform to, or have an intrinsic understanding of, American standards of behavior, while it's doubtful that he's even picked up so much as “The Child's Guide To India.” Of course, it does not help that all the writers seem to know about India is arranged marriages, silly names (Todd laughs at every new Indian name he hears), and they worship a number of wacky gods.
Because a show like this needs an unrequited love story, Todd is unreasonably drawn to Asha (Rebecca Hazelwood), a subordinate who works in the call center. She is set to be arranged married to someone else, much to Todd's dismay and anger. Asha's ability to spurn Todd's blatant and forceful advances seems to only make him want her more, and Todd's feelings towards her make Boardwalk Empire's Van Alden's attraction to Mrs. Shroeder seem positively darling.
Todd has one-dimensional underlings (all the characters are one dimensional for that matter) like Madhuri (Anisha Nagarajan), Gupta (Parvesh Cheena), and Manmeet (Sacha Dhawan) to help him with his dirty work. I can only assume they go along with Todd's schemes because either they believe it's how people act in America, they fear being fired if they don't assist, or both.
100 Questions
During the summer of 2010, NBC aired six episodes of 100 Questions in place of Parks and Recreation. Starring Sophie Winkleman (a Brit who actually spoke in a British accent) and Collette Wolfe, this laugh track permeated show was a “brilliant” throw back to the era of Seinfeld and Friends where every other comedy on the NBC line-up (Caroline in the City, The Single Guy, Union Square, etc.) was a rip-off of Friends, which itself was an inferior knockoff of Seinfeld.
100 Questions followed Charlotte Payne, a woman seeking the love of her life at a dating service. At the beginning of each episode, Gay Black Dating Service Guy asks her a question, and the following half hour features a story from her past loosely related to that question.
One immediate problem: the show did not give any indication how far in the future the questioning takes place (e.g. are the questions asked in 2010 while the answers occurred in the 2000s? Are the questions in 2015 while the answers are today?) or how many questions Payne answers in a given session, given that each “episode” was a different question.
As a gimmick, it lacked cohesiveness even in the six few episodes that aired. The episodes did not end with GBDSG and Payne having a “Mork Calling Orson”/What Did We Learn moment nor was it used as a framing device, as a different subplot generally wrapped up over the closing credits.
As mentioned, the show was a Friends-ian ripoff, and Charlotte's gang of misfits consisted of Nerdy Guy. Hot Guy. Stupid Girl Friend One. And Stupid Girl Friend Two: The Foreign One.
The show was also responsible for one of the most oddly designed bars (as in the place they went to drink/hang out) in recent television history, and this theme song.
Just listen to that.
Nevertheless, there was a charm to 100 Questions. The lame laugh track, the way too close friends, the Sitcom 101 dialogue and jokes, 100 Questions was terrible without being ironic or meta about it, which is rare these days. Unfortunately, it was not renewed.
