Nothing new in 'Gulliver’s Travels'

Director: Rob Letterman

Cast: Jack Black, Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet

That we know what happens in the much-filmed version of Irish clergyman Jonathan Swift’s timeless parody on human nature – and travel writing – somehow tells against this latest version … it is, sadly, predictable and disappointingly lacking in novelty.

There is not a great deal that could be changed in the story but, somehow, director Letterman and his writers make no effort to find something new in the story of Lemuel Gulliver (played to his customary class by Black) and his stay among the little people of Liliput.

This version does have a modern setting with Gulliver, a wannabe travel writer, persuading his love interest and travel editor boss (Peet) to send him on a jaunt to Bermuda.

On the way he is shipwrecked and fetches up in Liliput … where everything happens that we expect to happen, no startling innovations, nothing that surprises us.

Star Rating: 3/5