Gulliver's Travels (2010)
Directed by Rob Letterman
Travel writer Lemuel Gulliver takes an assignment in Bermuda, but ends up on the island of Liliput, where he towers over its tiny citizens.
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The pop culture references fly fast and furious, with Gulliver feeding Horatio lines from Prince's "Kiss" in a Romeo and Juliet inspired romance scene, a replica of Times Square erected in Gulliver's honor, and the bad guys cook up a giant robot that's supposed to be their answer to Gulliver's might as a warrior, but really just recreates the dull metal-on-metal fight scenes from Iron Man 2 (that one might not have been intentional).
Production designer Gavin Bocquet ("Kafka" and early "Star Wars" ) deserves a shout-out for making the big and the small so compatible and yet so distinct.
Lemuel Gulliver is a comic book-reading, Star Wars-loving nerd who works in the mailroom of a large newspaper.
Since she’s only in the film at its far ends, and is, of course, secretly in love with the Star Wars–fixated dweeb, is there any reason this part couldn’t have been played by, say, Janeane Garofalo?
Emboldened by his newly acquired size, Gulliver now exaggerates his past, drawing on film culture to cast himself as the victorious hero of stories ranging from Star Wars to Titanic.
A world of Guitar Hero and "Star Wars" DVDs?
He helps Horatio woo the princess (Blunt) away from her pompous fiance (Chris O'Dowd), and then regales the Lilliputians with tales of his world, in which he was "President Awesome" and starred in both Star Wars and Titanic.
The modern-day Gulliver litters Lilliput with pop-culture references, and soon residents are stepping in big piles of everything from "Star Wars" to "Avatar."
In their eyes he's combination of Han Solo, Leo in Titanic and Sam Worthington in Avatar.
And the script had its clever moments: pop-culture geek Gulliver directed recreations of Titanic, Star Wars and Avatar, claiming them as his own exploits.
Now that Gulliver’s a hero, he lies and tells the Lilliputians that he’s the president of the United States, and he restages sequences from “Star Wars,” “Titanic,” and “Avatar” as though they were chapters from his own life.
The Lilliputians act out scenes from Gulliver’s alleged life story, which includes some fateful moments from Titanic and The Empire Strikes Back.
More successful is a scene where Gulliver puts on plays for the Lilliputians of classic movies "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Titanic."
I doubt it, but they can stare happily through their 3D glasses while the accompanying adults laugh at the sheer silliness of pudgy, Converse-wearing Jack Black encouraging the Lilliputians to build a mini-Times Square in his honour or convincing them that the plots of The Empire Strikes Back and Titanic were merely episodes in his exciting life.
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He even has his wee followers construct a theater where they recreate stories from “his” life, which play much like “Star Wars” and “Titanic.”
Much like 2004’s Around the World in 80 Days remake, Gulliver’s is a star-studded reimagining of a classic piece of literature that shoots for the moon, aims for laughs and misses both targets by a country mile.
With its wacky accents and silly shenanigans, “Gulliver’s Travels” could have been “Time Bandits” for a new generation, but instead feels like “Attack of the 50-Foot Couch Potato.”
When he persuades the Lilliputians that he is known as President Awesome back home where he comes from, we see posters all over the city with Gulliver appearing as the hero of every movie or play from “West Side Story” to “Wicked.”
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The hero's journey, the generic and dated-by-2011 pop culture references, the blatant gag-stealing from movies like Shrek, the shoehorning of a giant fighting robot into the last act--none of it is for people old enough to read this review.
The only two Swiftian plot points usually funny writers Joe Stillman ( Shrek , Shrek 2 ) and Nicholas Stoller ( Get Him To The Greek ) — who are really slumming here — are devoted to are size issues and the instance where the gigantic Gulliver (Black) whips out his man hose and puts out a palace fire by peeing all over the joint.
The movie's got elements of "Shrek" and "Night at the Museum," but it has a much more childlike bounce to it than the latter, zinging from one silly situation to the next without a care.
I had hoped for something more ingenious from Stillman, a writer on “Shrek” and “Shrek 2,” but he’s obviously continuing to spiral southward since last year’s dreary “Planet 51.”
Here again a conspicuous lack of imagination finds director Rob Letterman (Shark Tale, Monsters vs. Aliens) and writers Joe Stillman (Shrek, Shrek 2) and Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) pillaging ideas from Cyrano de Bergerac to Transformers, Iron Man and even Black's School of Rock.
Imagine Amanda Peet in "The Godfather," or in "Some Like It Hot," or in "Citizen Kane."