Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Feature Film: Gullivers Travels (Part 2)

(Note that my primary posts on Gulliver's Travels are spread out over four entries; this is an artifical division, and once they have all been posted, it will make more sense to read them together as a single unit.)





























There's a townsperson who looks like Dopey, followed by one who looks like Snow White... The moving light as the bridge is walked on is interesting.

A big difference between this and the original story is that it is told from the point of view of the cruel, small minded Lilliputians. So it is not about the smallness of them, but the bigness of Gulliver. Somehow Gabby, the idiot town crier, is put in charge of the giant operation. It's more than 35 minutes into the movie until Gulliver does anything but almost drown and sleep. Not exactly the optimal way to characterize your title character. But it's certainly the '39 cliche to ditch your title character. Why, they even ditched the "Travels" part of the title. Watching them move Gulliver is like watching a freighter on a lake; it's realllll slowwwwww. He opens his eyes 38:08 into the movie with 38:25 left of it. Imagine if they did that on Lost; instead of someone opening their eye at the beginning of, well, a bunch of episodes. It would have lost a lot of punch. The same holds true here, i think. But then the cast of Lost is not ugly like Gulliver. Gulliver has a sort of Bing Crosby rip off voice. Big red reel change in my viewed print.

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