Another story Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Movie Critic

Starring Jack Black, Amanda Peet and Jason Segel. (PG. 85 minutes. Opens Saturday at Bay Area theaters.) Like a rare and delicate flower, “Gulliver’s Travels”… Jack Black’s latest effort to wring laughter from the cineplex plays to a few of his strengths his physicality, his musicality, his eyebrows. ‘Forever Tango’ review: Key steps missing Allan Ulrich, Chronicle Dance Correspondent Of all commercial dance entertainments, “Forever Tango,” which opened here in 1994 and returned Tuesday evening to the Marines’ Memorial Theatre for a sixth visit, may be the most durable. No doubt he’d have been keen on poking fun at this new world — Swift had a fascination with human failings of the most base sort — but I don’t think a three-story Coke can that’s washed up on the shores of Lilliput with all the other debris in the latest film adaptation is what he’d have in mind. Yet, the package, created and… Black plays Lemuel Gulliver, a lonely, “Star Wars”-obsessed loser who’s stuck in the mail room at a publishing house. With director Rob Letterman (“Shark Tale” and “Monsters vs. Yeah, sure, he’s a writer. Drag takes off on N.Y. stages – grab your boa Mark Kennedy, Associated Press Will Swenson went from very hairy to virtually hairless in a matter of weeks. Jack Black’s persona has always been larger than life, so in a way, he’s the perfect choice for an adaptation of ” Gulliver’s Travels .” But while Black ably carries the movie on his super-size shoulders, Rob Letterman’s slacker take on the Jonathan Swift classic is easier to like than respect. Since this a modern-day telling, the modern world intrudes from beginning to end, and in 3-D. Unless you consider transforming Lilliput’s elegant 18th-century grand plaza into a tacky Times Square commercial strip, or having Gulliver battle a towering Transformer-like robot, doing something.

Letterman seems perfectly happy to stand back and let the lead do his thing, which makes the movie feel like — well, most of Black’s other films. Before landing on Lilliput, Gulliver was at the bottom of a Manhattan publishing giant’s ladder, the mailroom guy with a hopeless crush on Amanda Peet ‘s smart, successful beauty with a corner office and travel assignments to dole out. Gulliver himself is no longer an experienced explorer, but a lowly mailroom guy at a major New York newspaper who talks himself into a travel-writing assignment in order to impress the pretty editor (Amanda Peet) he’s been crushing on for years. Aliens ) sands the edges off of Jonathan Swift’s tale and replaces them with robots, wedgie jokes, and a neatly wrapped all-you-need-is-confidence personal message, which also plays out through Jason Segel’s attempts as a lower-caste Lilliputian to woo his kingdom’s princess (Emily Blunt). Alas, poor Horatio (Jason Segel) is but a commoner, lacking the pedigree or act of valor to make him worthy to pursue that princess. Back home, he tells the little Lilliputians, people call him President the Awesome. Deemed a “beast,” Gulliver is thrown in prison, where he befriends Horatio (Jason Segel), a kindly soul Edward locked up for daring to make eyes at his bride-to-be, Princess Mary (Emily Blunt, whose primary character trait is a taste for plunging necklines). Never mind that he plagiarized them (he’s bumbling, he’s jive, and he’s ethically challenged!). He’s even able to throw a Lillipalooza concert featuring Lilliputian versions of his favorite bands.

Before Darcy finds out, she has sent him on assignment to the Bermuda Triangle, which is how he ends up in the land of Lilliput. My suggestion would be to put it away for a day, and then, during one of those… And on Masonic Street, there’s reason for the Newsoms to…

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