Imagine my surprise, then, when this turned out to be a real film, out in cinemas this Boxing Day. I tried to reserve judgement. I’ve seen School of Rock many times, Tenacious D songs Tribute and Wonderboy are regular visitors to my MP3 player, and I even tried to like The Pick of Destiny. As I went into the screening, I was trepidatious – would it turn out to be a Christmas cracker, or a cold, dry turkey? In a bid to impress the object of his affections Darcy Silverman (Amanda Peet), Gulliver claims to be an experienced travel writer, and Darcy sends him off to investigate the Bermuda Triangle. But when his boat runs into a freak storm, Gulliver washes up on the shore of Lilliput, an island populated by tiny people. He soon ingratiates himself with the island’s population with another set of self-aggrandizing lies, earning their respect and adoration, and life seems pretty good as the Lilliputians set to work repairing his boat. But when his lies unravel, leaving the little people in big trouble, will Gulliver be able to save the day and get the girl? The big problem with this, of course, is that the plot was pretty much covered the first time round. Black wanders competently through the script, hitting all the beats required of him, but with none of the passion or enthusiasm that made the earlier film such a joy to watch. The rest of the cast are a mixed bag. The villain of the piece, General Edward Edwardian, is played by Chris O’Dowd, of The IT Crowd fame. While O’Dowd certainly doesn’t embarrass himself in the role, it’s a curious casting choice, and O’Dowd doesn’t really have the presence needed to lend his confrontations with Gulliver any sense of menace. This comes as something of a relief; I don’t know if director Rob Letterman has ever worked with British actors before, but all three deliver their lines in such a bizarrely-stilted fashion that it can only have been a directorial decision. The Americans in the cast fare slightly better. Studio 60 star Amanda Peet puts in a likeable enough performance as the bog-standard love interest, and you almost believe that she would feel anything other than boredom and revulsion around Gulliver. Jason Segel, clearly just pleased not to be doing How I Met Your Mother for a few months, gives a good stab at making us sympathetic towards the Lilliputians, and he and Black strike up a believable friendship. The target of his desires is Emily Blunt, who suffers from the same stilted ‘Royal Family acting’ as Connolly et al, but is largely inoffensive. Of course, the cast could be filled with the finest actors in the land, but it wouldn’t mean anything without a decent script. And sadly, this is far from a decent script. Stillman and Stoller took the scene from the book in which Gulliver puts out a fire by urinating on it, and used it as the template for the rest of the film. The jokes rarely rise above base level, with highlights including Jack Black in a dress, and Jack Black’s anus falling onto a Lilliputian. The few genuinely amusing scenes come from swipes at pop culture, with Be Kind Rewind-style recreations of popular films and a series of parody posters for films starring Gulliver in the lead elliciting a few proper laughs. This is obviously a loose adaptation of the book, but as time goes on it feels like desperation is sinking in. The story of Gulliver’s journey to a land populated by giants is condensed into a five minute sequence which serves merely as a plot point to get Black away from Lilliput so that Darcy can show up, and the scenes in which O’Dowd builds himself a giant robot with which to fight Black feel forced and shoehorned-in at best. But the real insult comes in the last ten minutes of the film. I’m not going to spoil it here, just to say that the resolution comes out of nowhere, is absolutely unsatisfying, and makes very little sense as an ending. I had my hands in my head during this segment, and looking around I was not alone. Even the children in the audience seemed as embarrassed as the cast on screen. It is a shame that we at Den of Geek have already had to submit our best and worst films of the year, as this would win the worst film award for me hands-down. For the best thing I can say about Gulliver’s Travels is that it promotes the idea of staying at home as a family on Boxing Day instead of spending money at the cinema. In short, if you refuse to see just one film this year, make that film Gulliver’s Travels.
