Wednesdays news “Gulliver’s Travels” Tests Jack Black’s Appeal

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – In the U.S., 20th Century Fox is selling the feature film “Gulliver’s Travels” as a Jack Black comedy. Overseas, where Jonathan Swift’s classic tome is far more familiar, the film is being sold on the story. Like that other recent adaptation of a classic, proportion-obsessed fantasy novel, Alice in Wonderland , this high-energy, lowbrow comedy take on Gulliver’s Travels strips the source material down to its recognizable parts and then builds something completely new out of them. 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. But even at 83 minutes, “Gulliver’s Travels” is a drag, another 3D movie for kids in which the 3D adds nothing while subtracting from their parents’ wallets. Fox will find out as Gulliver’s, rated PG, opens December 25 in 2,546 theaters in the U.S. The 3D family adventure is also making a major push overseas. If only the Lilliputians could have figured out how to keep the one-note comic actor in restraints, and maybe jab him now and again with pointy sticks. With director Rob Letterman (“Shark Tale” and “Monsters vs. One sloppy and not at all credible misunderstanding later, and Gulliver is suddenly traveling alone on assignment to the Bermuda Triangle, where a spurting cyclone sends him to Liliput, a magically miniaturized realm populated by tiny people. Yeah, sure, he’s a writer.

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. There, he becomes a benevolently bodacious god, using the diminutive denizens for his own amusement ? the film’s best bit comes when he has them re-enact films like Star Wars and Titanic on a stage mocked up to look like a television ? while simultaneously teaching them not to be so uptight, dude. Darcy decides he’s the right guy to send on a Bermuda Triangle travel story.

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. Black, alack, is Lemuel Gulliver, a mail-room employee for a New York newspaper. 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 Segal’s attempts as a lower-caste Lilliputian to woo his kingdom’s princess (Emily Blunt). Gulliver copes with Lilliput the way he coped with his real life with exaggeration. “Gulliver’s” has several distinct challenges. Soon he’s sucked into the famed Triangle, which hides a tiny country called Lilliput.

So he’s got some emotional growing up to do. But then, in a panicky moment of characteristic callowness, he presents a couple of sample articles to impress her. He’s even able to throw a Lillipalooza concert featuring Lilliputian versions of his favorite bands. Black has the kind of cheeky comic sensibility that should have perfectly suited Gulliver — a straight man if there ever was one with an eye for the absurd. “Gulliver’s” production budget was $100 million. Fox didn’t carry the cost alone. Dune Entertainment and Ingenious were the studio’s co-financing partners on “Gulliver’s.” Dune and Ingenious were Fox’s partners on “Avatar.” “Gulliver’s” was initially scheduled to open in summer of this year.