Gulliver’s Travels (2010– 85 mins) Jack Black, Jason Segel, Amanda Peete, Emily Blunt

This is inevitably going to be another GeekJock rant on why movie critics both ones who get paid and ones who don’t yet still take themselves too seriously (and aren’t named The GJ) simply SUCK.

Let’s take “Gulliver’s Travels” for instance. It got KILLED in the press. Let me quote two outlet’s who take themselves way too seriously. First (both via meta critic) Variety–> “The story grows more desperate as it goes on.”

Second my beloved magazine of choice, even tho their movie reviewers all kinda blow, Entertainment Weekly

“Strips the source material down to its recognizable parts and then builds something completely new out of them. Unfortunately, the result is entirely Lilliputian in ambition, even for a children’s movie.”

Come on people… REALLY? REALLY? “Gulliver’s Travels”, a movie that has been done and re-done countless times, and this one stars JACK BLACK and Jason Segel. Let me REPEAT this.. and louder…. THE MOVIE STARS JACK BLACK… Not Lawrence Olivier, not Orson Wells, not Carey Grant…. JACK FREEKING BLACK…. What in the name that is all holy did you expect a kids movie starting Jack Black to be like? Sure, there’s potty humor and dumb jokes around every corner. There’s supposed to be. Sure Jack Black does air guitar, and funny faces and falls on his face. HE’S JACK BLACK.

Dumb critics everywhere bash this movie for being what it is. A funny at times cheezy over the top kids movie. Is it the funniest thing I have ever seen? Of course not. But it was quite entertaining and I thought the jokes were modern and all made me laugh. It’s a decent entertaining movie and I recommend it to my readers. I don’t care what these idiots who get paid to review movies think. They all want to sound so sophisticated and pad their view of themselves loving nothing but movies like “The Piano” and “Out Of Africa”, but as always I say NAY! Stop paying attention to those idiot naysayers and come back to the independents who tell you what is just plain enjoyable like THE GEEKJOCK #blatantplug

[[steps down off soap box]]

Ok back to the issue at hand… “Gulliver’s Travels”. For those of you who are either sheltered or never seen ANY of the previous making of the movie I will enlighten you. Jack Black is a slacker mail room guy who manages to get the trial job of his career. To check out and write about the Bremuda Triangle. Things go horribly wrong and he gets shipwrecked onto a remote island. This island happens to be inhabited by humans who are only inches tall compared to a normal size man like Gulliver. They all talk like olden Shakespeare types and have weird rules and laws and it all leads to some funny jabs at the world and talking like that etc. Gulliver must inevitably get a backbone he never had and learn some lessons in life which he never did being a slacker.

So not only do we get some hilarity, but we get the underlying “be all you can be” lesson to the movie. It’s good for kids and fun for the family. (I think there was only one or two questionable sentences or word choices but nothing too bad that I would even prevent my 4 year old from watching).

Verdict—> Don’t believe the nasty hate hype out there this is a funny kids/family movie. It’s a Jack Black flick so don’t expect there to be too much seriousness and it will be slapstickish in nature. I liked it and I recommend it to anyone who wants to have some mindless fun and laugh a bit. Also Emily Blunt and Jason Segel are good in it,  and appear to be having a good time at it.

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