This is not a bad film - it is a very bad film. Billed as a comedy it is an offence under the Trades Description Act. It was the first film I saw this year and I guarantee I will not see a worse one. OK I should have known better but it was a wet afternoon in January and with no grass to watch growing what else was I supposed to do? This film is simply an excuse for Jack Black to assail our senses once more with his wearisome pseudo social misfit, camera-gurning, eye-popping, double-taking, cool 'rock dude' act. When is he going to stop playing Dewey Finn - I mean, how old is he now; mid 40s?
Very loosely based on Swift's novel, the plot - such as it is - has our eponymous hero sent on a travel assignment to the Bermuda Triangle where his boat is caught in a maelstrom and he fetches up on a beach in Lilliput, a backward, class-ridden Ruritanic kingdom ruled by an oligarchy (so naturally most of the actors are British) to which JB introduces the values of Truth, Justice and the American Way thus becoming an enlightened and better place: (yes I am being sarcastic). I could just about endure this film if were not for the final insult to my intelligence in which JB outlines to the Liiliput/Brobdingnag people the futility of fighting by his cartwheeling rendition of Edwin Starr's War.
If your idea of a good film is an 85 minute subtext of U.S. cultural imperialism littered with mindless MTV-culture references and product placement then I recomend it. If you do have a brain however, then like the plague and cliches this film is best avoided.
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