I went to see Jack Black’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ in Chichester with the family. My boy Alfie loved the action and just managed to get through the romantic disinterest. Every time the action dropped below a certain level of intensity, he became a squirming wrecking ball in the seat next to me; bouncing like a giant Mexican bean, his flailing feet inches from the head of the old gent in the seat in front. I tried my best to explain concepts such as The Bermuda Triangle, travel editors, mail rooms and 18th century satire, but Alfie’s six year old mind absorbed selectively.
It’s a good movie. Good CGI. But show me a recentish film with crap CGI. Special effects aren’t the problem any more. Jack Black is a genius comic actor. Yes, genius. Feels scary making a big and ballsy claim like that, but hey, the end of 2010 is only a few days away and I haven’t used up my yearly quota of hyperbole yet. But, smart ass bathos aside, I do mean it. He’s good. Like a younger, video game era, turbo charged yankee version of Ronnie Barker. I found myself A) wondering what he’d be like in a straight role and B) remembering how much I loved “School of Rock.” And talking of video games, do all mass market movies have to have video game references in them now. We see Gulliver Black as a lowly mail room schmuck rocking out with Guitar Hero, and then in Liliputia, he can enjoy his very own LIVE version of the game, with Kiss lookalikes rocking, pausing and saving at his command. Humor is like raw chicken. It goes off a lot faster than tragedy.
