TRAILER REPORT- Gulliver's Travels

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.

Golden Globes- Best Motion Picture Comedy/Musical- What The Fuck?

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 Wonderland can 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 tale Burlesque 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.

Academy Award Winner … Russell Brand?

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 Byrne showed 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.