A Modest Comment

It's always a bad idea to complain about movies you haven't even watched. But in the case of the new film version of Gulliver's Travels, starring Jack Black, I'm going to do it anyway. The trailer looked horrid (short version: Jack Black doing his usual boorish stuff but with miniature sets and other actors composited in looking really tiny), but I kept a glimmer of hope until I read a summary of the plot.

It seems in this version, Gulliver is a nebbishy (but boorish) guy who stumbles into Lilliput and realizes that even a "little guy" like himself can be heroic and important. Okay, a nice heartwarming message of human worth.

Now: imagine firing up the TARDIS and hopping back to Dublin in 1727 to explain this to Jonathan Swift. He was a shrewd guy; he'd probably grasp the concept of motion pictures fairly quickly. Then you tell him that his biting satire of human folly, corruption, and pettiness has been turned into a "feel-good" comedy.

I think he would be blank-faced with astonishment for a moment, but then his mocking, bitter laughter would make the walls of St. Patrick's Cathedral echo and re-echo for a long, long time.