Alas, many are the times that I wish I had more power. Whenever I write about Israel/Palestine for instance, or demand greater responsibility from the folks in Washington.
Or today, when I’m confronting the bad reviews that greeted Jack Black’s latest offering, Gulliver’s Travels.
You heard me.
A couple of weeks ago, the girl announced that she wanted to see Gulliver’s Travels on Christmas, and I thought, well, huh. Ok. My spidey sense had picked up on some bad buzz — and I confess to thinking it unlikely that the movie had very much to do with the source material — but, well: Jack Black. And: The kids! So, sure. Gulliver’s Travels. Whatever. It’s all about the kids! And Jack Black!
And guess what, dear reader? I laughed.
Out loud.
A lot.
And emerged declaring the film (and I believe this is an exact quote): “AWEsome!”
Beyond vague thumbs-up/thumbs-down indicators, I almost never read reviews of movies beforehand, and if I’ve enjoyed something that I know critics didn’t, I tend not to read the reviews at all — for far too often, this has led to me feeling like a rube, and retroactively having a bad time (I’ve never meant to suggest that the space In My Head is anything other than messy).
But this time (absolutely confident in how much fun I’d had), I thought I’d find out just how bad the buzz was, and oh my goodness. 21% at Rotten Tomatoes is bad, right? Yeah. That’s really bad.
BUT HERE’S THE THING.
The vast majority of the reviewers who didn’t like the movie made snippy comments about how little it had to do with the source material, and I’m sorry (no wait. I’m not) — if you thought that a Jack Black movie geared toward children and released on Christmas weekend was going to be a painstaking adaptation of early 18th century political satire:
- You’re a moron and
- You’re a moron.
First of all, I have a very distinct memory of actively disliking Jonathan Swift’s masterpiece, finding it as witty and subtle as a sledgehammer. Of course, I’m not very clever, but maybe it’s just possible that political satire — being a genre wedded and welded to the time in which it is written — doesn’t hold up over the course of some three centuries.
Second of all: Jack Black. Honestly? You went to a movie starring Jack Black (School of Rock, Kung Fu Panda, Tenacious D ?) and expected Swift? What on earth is wrong with you?
The basic idea — regular sized person caught by very, very little persons on a beach — was lifted from Swift’s work, and then made into something else. In my suburb, we call that “repurposing.” It happens in movies all the fucking time, and no one seems to notice or mind.
Moreover, from start to finish, the movie was laugh-out-loud, cover-your-mouth-with-your-hand, don’t-want-to-embarrass-the-children funny. (Plus which, that thing with the princess at the end? Awesome!) It was (hold on to your hats kids, ’cause I’mma sound fancy) absurd.
The humor in Gulliver’s Travels hits that very, very small sweet spot between slapstick and absurdist. Often the former looks like the latter, but isn’t. Frequently the latter is mistaken for the former and is unfairly written off.
But the folks who made this movie managed to create a kind of gentle absurdist humor that appealed to everyone in my family. The characters — absurd as they were — appeared to genuinely care for each other, the women were (get this!) believable (take that, Judd Apatow!), and both the main character and the villain were (dare I say it?) complex.
Gulliver is a good guy, a sweet guy — but he is, also, undeniably, a liar, who is used to compensating for his own low self-esteem with ridiculous (absurd!) lies. The bad guy, General Edward, is a tightly wound prick who thinks only of himself — but he is also, undeniably, right when he tries to warn Lilliput against trusting Gulliver too much.
Horrors! Humor that doesn’t always make sense, and heroes and villains with a smidgen of complexity! And it doesn’t look very much like a 300 year old book that shares its name! Let me just clutch my movie reviewer pearls!
Interestingly enough, Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun Times) and Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune) gave the movie two of its few decent reviews (though, it should be noted, these were not as glowing as mine is. “Awesome” isn’t mentioned once, by either man, if memory serves) — maybe it’s a Midwest thing.
Or maybe, they, too watched The Monkees when they were little and learned to recognize gentle absurdist humor when they see it.
But alas. No one gives a shit what I think, and Gulliver’s will go down in history as a failure.
Goddamnit, why don’t I have more power?
hahaha! I can picture you clutching your movie reviewer pearls. Is that wrong?
Heaven’s no! I believe it’s just as it must be.
“Mah pearls! Mah pearls!”
I had the opposite experience, as my hubby and I ventured out from the safety of our homes into the multiplex to see Black Swan based on all the positive reviews and buzz. Some excellent performances by the cast, but…
I would put this in the “take your medicine” school of film-making, wherein the director proves how serious and important he is by forcing audiences to stare at gross, disgusting images of violence done to the human body. And critics tend to lap this up and talk about how brave and unsparing the director’s vision is. But it reminded me of when I was in college and volunteered for a research project. They were measuring pupil dilation in response to images, and you were shown a slideshow that mixed things like puppies and attractive nude people with closeups of burn victims or unchecked peridontal disease.
And when every single scene leaves you with a “did that really happen or is she imagining all this” reaction, you eventually stop allowing yourself to be moved by the images of the characters’ suffering, since they’re likely to pop up in the next scene completely unharmed, like the cartoon villian who keeps getting blown up, dropped off cliffs and run over by trains.
i had the same experience with Tron: Legacy. it was AWESOME. but reviewers kept nitpicking on stupid things, like the plausibility of cyberspace as imagined in the tron movies. hello? of course the premise is absurd! that’s called suspension of disbelief. tron’s cyberspace is as plausible as whole groups of people spontaneously breaking into a highly correographed song and dance number to express emotion, but i dont see reviewers complaining about that aspect of most critically acclaimed musicals.
also, too, Roger Ebert is the only reviewer i trust because he reviews movies based on how it compares with its peers and how enjoyable it is. so if its not an art flick, he doesn’t treat it like it should be.
he also liked both trons (the original is actually on some top list of movies of his to watch due to the ground-breaking special effects).
i’m adding gulliver to my netflix queue for when it comes out. thx for the review!
Ebert’s also good for giving credit to a film for the chances it takes, even if, in the end, there’s no payoff.
And, related to the OP: I recall a special comment that Siskel and Ebert made on their program as one of the later Police Academy (3? 4?) flicks was opening. In a nutshell, they said that they weren’t going to review movies like this any longer, not necessarily because they didn’t want to sit through them- and they didn’t want to- but because, like the Bowery Boys flicks of Gene’s and Roger’s childhoods, the Police Academy flicks were full of things that made kids laugh. Not original, funny ideas, but what’s that matter to a kid who hasn’t already seen the same thing done a hundred times?
he reviews movies based on how it compares with its peers and how enjoyable it is. Exactly. After all these years, he still manages to maintain his sense of regular audience member. And bless him for it!
(And good to hear re: Tron — for that’s the film we have planned for New Year’s Eve!)
Thanks for the review. Taking three tween boys to see it tomorrow. Jack Black hasn’t let us down yet. I guess I will also be seeing Kung Fu Panda #2.