Save yourself and your children from the abomination that is this new, modern-day retelling of Jonathan Swift’s scathing and enduring 1726 masterpiece. Black is Gulliver, a loser and mailroom worker at a major New York City newspaper. Jonathan Swift probably never dreamed of the consumer excess that would elbow its way into the great satire of “Gulliver’s Travels” all these centuries later.

Horatio’s rival, General Edward (Chris O’Dowd), is a preening blowhard. 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. Black plays Lemuel Gulliver, a mail room clerk for a big-city newspaper. Like, say, product placement (the video game Guitar Hero plays a part in the alleged plot), a giant robot and a unique twist on firefighting procedures in which our protagonist urinates on a blaze, drenching poor Billy Connolly and Chris O’Dowd in hundreds of gallons of amber liquid. With director Rob Letterman (“Shark Tale” and “Monsters vs. 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. The rest of the time, crickets. Since this a modern-day telling, the modern world intrudes from beginning to end, and in 3-D. 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. Gulliver’s Travels does speak to Jack Black’s lack of self-consciousness. Black says the special effects were a chance to use his imagination — to come up with the entire world of the film. As any cameraman will tell you, the least flattering angle to shoot a husky guy is from below.

To find out why I didn’t enjoy Gulliver’s Travels , just read more. He’s got a huge crush on travel editor Darcy Silverman ( Amanda Peet ), so an awkward, stammering conversation somehow gets him sent on assignment to Bermuda . The Shy Giant In keeping with Swift’s classic novel, Gulliver finds himself in a land of tiny people, the Lilliputians. Bravo on the lack of body image issues, Jack. So he’s got some emotional growing up to do. It’s there he finally becomes the big man — literally — he’s always dreamed of. With that said, the first act is actually mildly funny, but once the fantasy element begins, all the laughs are dependent on the cheapest of setups, like Gulliver peeing on a castle inferno, showering the cast with bright yellow liquid. Otherwise, Gulliver’s Travels remains one of those misbegotten projects that can’t decide whether it’s aimed at kids or adults, so it misses both.

It wasn’t hard to get into the mindset of a character who’s too timid to ask for a promotion, Black says. Aliens,” “Gulliver’s Travels” boasts a sequence in which Gulliver has the Lilliputians build him a theater in which they re-enact the “Star Wars” films, Gulliver’s “life story.” The 3-D effects are mostly undetectable, although you’ll still pay extra.

I assure you Dean Swift is spinning.

In the new film Gullivers Travels, Jack Black plays the big man in town — which proved to be quite a challenge with so many tiny actors on the set. “There were a lot of safety issues, obviously,” he tells Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz. With Jack Black , Emily Blunt . No tiny actors were harmed in the making of the movie, of course. In this iteration, Jack Black’s Gulliver is a stunted mail-room jockey at a newspaper. Save yourself and your children from the abomination that is this new, modern-day retelling of Jonathan Swift’s scathing and enduring 1726 masterpiece. Actually, the “pee” bit was the only occasion in the screening I attended wherein I heard the delightful laughter of children.

Black is Gulliver, a loser and mailroom worker at a major New York City newspaper. 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. It wasn’t hard to get into the mindset of a character who’s too timid to ask for a promotion, Black says.

Gulliver’s Travels does speak to Jack Black’s lack of self-consciousness. 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. As any cameraman will tell you, the least flattering angle to shoot a husky guy is from below. 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). That’s the way we see Black through most of the movie, on several occasions with his shirt off. He’s got a huge crush on travel editor Darcy Silverman ( Amanda Peet ), so an awkward, stammering conversation somehow gets him sent on assignment to Bermuda . Horatio’s rival, General Edward (Chris O’Dowd), is a preening blowhard. Soon he’s sucked into the famed Triangle, which hides a tiny country called Lilliput. Otherwise, Gulliver’s Travels remains one of those misbegotten projects that can’t decide whether it’s aimed at kids or adults, so it misses both. One painful memory is meeting Thom Yorke, the lead singer of the band Radiohead. She too ends up in Lilliput (presumably thanks to the same sea spout), but not before Gulliver gets banished and becomes a prisoner on another island, this one populated by giants. “Every sentence, it sounded like I was speaking through a bottle of molasses,” he says.

At the same time, it transforms this “Gulliver” into some species of a Jack Black movie, complete with scat-singing, “Guitar Hero”-playing, wedgies, goofy sounds, etc. “But we don’t have a Hanukkah Santa,” he says.

“That would be taking it too far.”

Jonathan Swift probably never dreamed of the consumer excess that would elbow its way into the great satire of “Gulliver’s Travels” all these centuries later. 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. With director Rob Letterman (“Shark Tale” and “Monsters vs. Since this a modern-day telling, the modern world intrudes from beginning to end, and in 3-D. And that won’t exactly be pretty. Well it is and it isn’t. The 3-D is pretty much wasted – for long stretches it hardly seems in 3-D at all – but everything to do with Gulliver’s being a giant among the tiny Lilliputians is handled consistently (no size ratio changes) and seamlessly. But Black’s brio is off — too much here, too little there, only occasionally right. But this story is not just about Gulliver.

Imagine Amanda Peet in “The Godfather,” or in “Some Like It Hot,” or in “Citizen Kane.” They all get a little bit better. This Lilliput is modeled even more lightly than Swift’s was on a not-jolly-old-England with its royalty and rubes, rigid rules and warring kingdoms. It’s just “a little story,” she tells him. Who said the newspaper business is hurting? And so he hits a storm and wakes up in Lilliput, where everyone is about 3 or 4 inches high and where the architecture, clothing and government are stuck in the mid-19th century. Not with a hose, exactly. Mild amusement is probably about right. Swift was the wizard behind that one.