Gulliver's Travels (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Rob Letterman. Starring Jack Black, Amanda Peet, Jason Segel.
Really quite astonishingly bad comedy based on the classic story.
I'm convinced that a modern-day adaptation of Gulliver's Travels isn't necessarily a bad idea. Even an adaptation starring Jack Black, with its inevitable transformation from biting satire into slapstick comedy, could conceivably have been good; the story is imaginative enough to withstand such an assault.
In this version, Gulliver (Black) is a mailroom employee at a major newspaper who pines after the travel editor (Amanda Peet) but is devoid of all other ambition. A hasty plot to impress her sends him on a solo boat trip to the Bermuda Triangle, where hijinks ensue.
Despite chopping out almost the entire story (only the Island of Lilliput and about five minutes in an unnamed land of giants made the cut) the film manages to accomplish remarkably little in its 85-minute running time. Pointless gags about Gulliver ordering the Lilliputians to recreate popular movies and products are substituted for character and plot development. The new roles and subplots created to fill the void are dull and plodding.
The presence of those products and properties is a fitting metaphor for what's wrong with the movie. Jonathan Swift, who had the insight to recognize the insidious side of the pocket watch in 1726, would have made a carnival out of mocking technology like the iPhone: one among dozens of product placements trotted out here without a hint of irony or self-awareness.
But the movie doesn't get truly horrible until its second half, when the natural allure of the premise is finally abandoned for good and replaced with a sort of concentrated slurry of stupidity.
At some point during the filming of the spontaneous dance performance of "War" (What is it Good For?) that takes place in the aftermath of a fight with a giant robot, surely everyone involved in this production must have realized they were creating an abomination. The question is how it got that far. There's hardly an idea in the script that was ever worth salvaging.
It's spared from the lowest depths of movie hell by its opening act, which is merely kind of bad.
Rated PG for shirtless Jack Black.
2 out of 5
The King's Speech (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Tom Hooper. Starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter.
Essentially perfect historical drama about King George VI's struggle to overcome his severe stutter amid a life in the public eye.
The King's Speech is mainly the story of the relationship between George VI (Colin Firth) and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), during his years as the Duke of York through his unexpected ascension to the throne near the start of World War II. With time they develop an understanding, and eventually a strange friendship. Placing a man's battle with his stammer as the central conflict of a film does not scream "compelling drama," but The King's Speech sells it from the start.
A glance from the duke or his wife (Helena Bonham Carter) in the opening scene as he flubs a speech at the 1925 British Empire Exhibition is enough to get across the true human cost of this apparently trivial problem.
Logue is a relatively pedestrian role for an actor of Geoffrey Rush's caliber. Having nothing left to prove, Rush lets himself be overshadowed by Firth, who gives one of the best performances of anyone in recent years. He succeeds brilliantly at portraying a man who is simultaneously courageous and drowning in anxiety; who is sometimes eloquent and sometimes so robbed of words that the expression on his face must tell the whole story. It's good to see some serious recognition for this actor who has been quietly stealing the show in supporting roles for ages.
The King's Speech above all exudes dignity and class, and not just for its royal scenery. It's at its best turning the more ordinary aspects of its subjects' lives into something fascinating to watch.
Firth's famous therapeutic rant-the one that bumped the movie from a PG to an R rating-is one of modern cinema's greatest achievements in profanity. As someone who doesn't have to deal with the millions of dollars in lost ticket sales, I'm going to say it was completely worth it.
Rated R for the damn puritans.
5 out of 5
