Gulliver's Travels (2010)

Gulliver's Travels is a 2010 American fantasy adventure comedy film directed by Rob Letterman, produced by John Davis and Gregory Goodman, written by Joe Stillman and Nicholas Stoller, which is loosely based on the 18th century novel by Jonathan Swift. The film was theatrically released on December 25, 2010 in the United States.

Plot
Lemuel Gulliver has been working in the mail room of a New York daily newspaper for the past ten years. Afraid to put himself out there, he considers himself a loser, as do all his peers. One day, after having finally had enough, he decides to declare his flame to the beautiful Darcy Silverman, the newspaper's travel editor and one of Gulliver's only friends...only to chicken out at the last minute and instead tell her that he'd like to try his hand at writing a column. Darcy accepts and sends him on an assignment to the Bermuda Triangle. There, Gulliver becomes caught in a waterspout and ends up on the island of Liliput, where he is twelve times taller than the tallest man. For the first time, Gulliver has people looking up to him.

Why It's Gullible

 * 1) Addressing the elephant in the room, the film tries so hard to modernize the classic story to the point where all, if not 97% of the humor is centered around pop culture references that are highly stale and insanely dated, and overall, it has almost nothing to do with the original story.
 * 2) The story relies heavily on product placements. The biggest driving force of the movie is Gulliver plagiarizing from a Frommer's article, and General Edward's weapon at the end came from the instruction manual of Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock.
 * 3) * Aside from that, there's many other product placements in the movie such as Red Bull, Apple, and others.
 * 4) One of the conflicts in the story is solved by Gulliver peeing on it. True, this scene was one of the very few times the movie was faithful to the original book, but the juvenile tone of the movie makes the scene a little awkward.
 * 5) Gulliver can be annoying, childish and kind of unlikable at times. He constantly lies about himself to make the people of Lilliput respect him.
 * 6) The comedy, when not pointing at a random pop culture reference, is rather juvenile, such as that present when Gulliver urinates on a building to extinguish a fire.
 * 7) Some characters don't serve a purpose and are nearly forgotten about. A great example of this is Dan, who's built up to be a major antagonist in Gulliver's journey, but he only appears in the beginning and the very end.
 * 8) The romantic subplot between Horatio and Princess Mary practically goes nowhere other than to give the Lilliputians (other than Edward) something to do.
 * 9) * Not only that, but even the romantic subplot between Gulliver and Darcy is pointless and barely ever comes into play.
 * 10) The movie has a lot of filler. Most of the movie consists of Gulliver sitting around or wandering through Lilliput goofing off.
 * 11) The plot is filled with cliché after cliché.
 * 12) The source material is constantly disregarded and almost ignored throughout the movie.
 * 13) Mostly poor acting, particularly from Billy Connolly, T.J. Miller and especially Chris O'Dowd.
 * 14) Some scenes tend to go on forever, especially when the Lilliputians reenact scenes from Titanic and The Empire Strikes Back.
 * 15) Some of the characters are incredibly stupid.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) They have a score from Henry Jackman, which is decent.
 * 2) Jack Black and Jason Segel do give off some good performances.
 * 3) The film can have some decently funny moments.
 * 4) The visual effects are actually great, since they were done by Tata Elxsi VCL, especially with how Lilliput is quite a spectacle to look at.
 * 5) The sequence at the end where Gulliver sings War is very entertaining and well sung by Jack Black.
 * 6) The opening credits are quite creative, portraying New York as a sort of model town.

Reception
Gulliver's Travels received mostly negative reviews. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 20% based on 118 reviews, with an average rating of 3.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Though Jack Black is back doing what he does best, Gulliver's Travels largely fails to do any justice to its source material, relying instead on juvenile humor and special effects". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 33 out of 100 based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.

Trivia

 * Emily Blunt had to star in this film as a result of starring in The Devil Wears Prada. Because of the scheduling conflict, she had to turn down the role of Black Widow in Iron Man 2.
 * Taylor Lautner was originally cast as Horatio, but was dropped after the filmmakers changed their minds and considered him too young for the part.
 * Sarah Michelle Gellar was considered to play the Princess of Lilliput.