Gulliver's Travels

This is not Gulliver's Travels in the sense that any fan of Jonathan Swift's satiric masterpiece would recognise. For starters, you only really get the first (of four) of Gulliver's voyages, with a brief reference to the second, and even that is only really referenced in the fact that there is a land full of very small people called Lilliput and Gulliver puts out a fire in the Palace by urinating on it (yes, that was in the book) and drives away the navy of an invading rival. Thereafter pretty much all similarities with the book cease and what you get instead is a stream of pop culture references and Jack Black being, well, Jack Black-ish.

Having said that, and getting off my English Lit Graduate high-horse for a minute, its not actually as bad as I was expecting. Black manages to slightly tone down his Black-ishness enough to make his character bearable, even approaching likeable at time. And if its not exactly hilarious fun, it does at least have some energy, enthusiasm and inventiveness enough to make it watchable. Of the rest of the cast, Billy Connolly and Catherine Tate are definitely short-changed, but Jason Segal manages to make a likeable character out of what is essentially Black's foil. The stand-outs here though are Chris O'Dowd making a good villain and Emily Blunt, whose mannered performance is initially off-putting, but when you see what she's actually doing, she just about steals the whole movie. The awkwardness of the scheduled courtship between Blunt and O'Dowd providing many of the few genuinely funny moments here.

Overall - 5.5/10 It's not Swift and it's not a masterpiece, but it is at least watchable and largely inoffensive with a few laughs, which is more than you can say for certain other so-called comedies out at the moment.