IIPM Excom Prof Rajita Chaudhuri
Of all the people you might imagine as Jonathan Swift’s intrepid voyager, Lemuel Gulliver, Jack Black would probably be the unlikeliest candidate. Which is why his casting in this 21st Century update of the classic tale is quite the twist.
Alas, the rest of the film is mostly predictable and in your face product placements and a constant torrent of self-referential jokes (for the studio – 20th Century Fox). “Gulliver’s Travels” is converted into a dyed in the wool Jack Black comedy, with our man Black playing a good for nothing slacker who listens to rock music and dreams of making it big as a writer. There are obvious shades of Dewey Finn, a character Black played in “School of Rock”. In order to impress the travel editor Darcy Silverman (Amanda Peet), who he has a crush on, Gulliver writes a plagiarised article and lands his first assignment – investigating the Bermuda Triangle, or more accurately, hunting down a man who happens to know about it. In the Caribbean, he gets lost in a storm and lands up on the shores of the land of Liliput, inhabited by little people who treat Gulliver as a giant beast who’s come from another land. The rest of the story is fairly well known among children and adults alike – Gulliver saves Liliput from the nearby evil kingdom and befriends the royal family but a General in the Liliputian army conspires to have him banished off the land.
With the rewriting for a modern time, the funny situations with the Liliputians had a lot of potential but beyond a few sparks (like the scene on the Foosball table), there are hardly any laugh worthy moments. For a majority of the audience the story would appear predictable, given their knowledge of the source material before hand. And that is where the studio wastes the opportunity of having Jack Black play the lead character. Gulliver with a dash of Jack Black’s classic comic style would have been loveable but the portrayal here is a little too safe to be irreverently enjoyable.
Modernising a classic tale is one thing, but limiting your imagination only to the visual setting is a criminal waste. The miniature Times Square that Gulliver creates in Liliput is quite a fun idea; one wishes the rest of the movie were more so. The edge and bite of Swift’s satire and wit that populated the original work sadly receive neither an upgrade nor a mention.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM ranks No 1 in International Exposure in the 'Third Mail Today B-School Survey'
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Kapil Sibal’s voters want Jan Lokpal, not Government-proposed Lokpal Bill
IIPM: What is E-PAT?
"Thorns to Competition" amongst the top 10 best sellers of the week.
IIPM RANKED NO.1 in MAIL TODAY B-SCHOOL RANKINGS
'Thorns to Competition' - You can order your copy online from here
IIPM Mumbai Campus
Of all the people you might imagine as Jonathan Swift’s intrepid voyager, Lemuel Gulliver, Jack Black would probably be the unlikeliest candidate. Which is why his casting in this 21st Century update of the classic tale is quite the twist.
Alas, the rest of the film is mostly predictable and in your face product placements and a constant torrent of self-referential jokes (for the studio – 20th Century Fox). “Gulliver’s Travels” is converted into a dyed in the wool Jack Black comedy, with our man Black playing a good for nothing slacker who listens to rock music and dreams of making it big as a writer. There are obvious shades of Dewey Finn, a character Black played in “School of Rock”. In order to impress the travel editor Darcy Silverman (Amanda Peet), who he has a crush on, Gulliver writes a plagiarised article and lands his first assignment – investigating the Bermuda Triangle, or more accurately, hunting down a man who happens to know about it. In the Caribbean, he gets lost in a storm and lands up on the shores of the land of Liliput, inhabited by little people who treat Gulliver as a giant beast who’s come from another land. The rest of the story is fairly well known among children and adults alike – Gulliver saves Liliput from the nearby evil kingdom and befriends the royal family but a General in the Liliputian army conspires to have him banished off the land.
With the rewriting for a modern time, the funny situations with the Liliputians had a lot of potential but beyond a few sparks (like the scene on the Foosball table), there are hardly any laugh worthy moments. For a majority of the audience the story would appear predictable, given their knowledge of the source material before hand. And that is where the studio wastes the opportunity of having Jack Black play the lead character. Gulliver with a dash of Jack Black’s classic comic style would have been loveable but the portrayal here is a little too safe to be irreverently enjoyable.
Modernising a classic tale is one thing, but limiting your imagination only to the visual setting is a criminal waste. The miniature Times Square that Gulliver creates in Liliput is quite a fun idea; one wishes the rest of the movie were more so. The edge and bite of Swift’s satire and wit that populated the original work sadly receive neither an upgrade nor a mention.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM ranks No 1 in International Exposure in the 'Third Mail Today B-School Survey'
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri Dean Business School IIPM
Kapil Sibal’s voters want Jan Lokpal, not Government-proposed Lokpal Bill
IIPM: What is E-PAT?
"Thorns to Competition" amongst the top 10 best sellers of the week.
IIPM RANKED NO.1 in MAIL TODAY B-SCHOOL RANKINGS
'Thorns to Competition' - You can order your copy online from here
IIPM Mumbai Campus
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