What Would Jonathan Swift Think of Jack Black's Gulliver?

New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott penned his review of the new rendition of Gulliver's Travels in the voice of Jonathan Swift, the satirist who wrote the original work. "Now, my good Sir, I hope I do not err in venturing a Comparison. Perhaps you are familiar with 'Night at the Museum'?" Scott writes. Others have taken to comparing the original work to this Jack Black-led comedy. "He's mainly a jolly giant here," says one critic. When director Rob Letterman took certain liberties in updating the tale to click with a younger, modern audience, did he stray too far from the original Swift story?

It doesn't stay true to the book: "In spite of surface similarities," says Chris Knight in National Post, "the film has little in common with the novel of old." The novel was a "send-up of England and France, their enmity, politics, customs, religious divisions and foibles. The movie is merely a safe-for-kids rom-com with an emphasis on (pun unavoidable) personal growth." What we get is "a tame tale, neither as clever as might be hoped nor as tasteless as one might fear."

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