Gulliver's Travels
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: December 25, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
33
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
12
Negative:
14
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 22, 2010
This is what the holidays need: a good, Swift kick in the funny bone. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithDec 25, 2010
Black was already the world's biggest little kid, and he might be the only actor who could have made this movie such nimble fun. Read full review
75
MovielineMichelle OrangeDec 24, 2010
It's all sweet and very, very silly. I was surprised by the subtleties - both comedic and thematic. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 24, 2010
You may be imagining this is an animated film, and that Jack Black is voicing Lemuel Gulliver. Not at all. This is live action, and despite the 3-D, it's sorta old-fashioned, not that that's a bad thing. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenDec 25, 2010
For a novel written nearly 300 years ago by a dour Irish cleric with a mad-on about the material world and a satiric mindset dark enough to flirt with misanthropy, it's amazing how well Gulliver's Travels travels. Even Jack Black can't ruin the thing, although not for lack of trying. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 24, 2010
The cast is enjoyable, with Jason Segel (as Gulliver's lil' pal, Horatio) and Emily Blunt (the local princess) a witty cut above for this sort of thing. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 25, 2010
It's not bad. It's cute. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 25, 2010
For myself, I was but seldom inspired to peals of true laughter, though I did relish that part when Mr. Black, confronting a fire raging in the Palace of Lilliput, douses the blaze through heroic use of such means as Nature has provided him. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 25, 2010
The cast gamely tries to keep up, with the scene-stealing O'Dowd making the strongest impression. Still, it all feels so lazy and familiar that adults may find themselves hoping Black will start to challenge himself again - and the more swiftly the better. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyDec 24, 2010
Oone of those movies that falls between complete disaster and loads of fun. Mild amusement is probably about right. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyNick PinkertonDec 24, 2010
Black, looking like an unwashed clothes pile and capering in familiar "Uncle Jack" style, is a good babysitter, his cross-dressing turn in a doll's house a highlight. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderAndrea GronvallDec 24, 2010
Jack Black is the title character in this thin adaptation of the Jonathan Swift classic. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 22, 2010
Yet another foray into unnecessary 3-D, is a rehashed mishmash of Jonathan Swift's 18th-century classic. Mostly, it's a vehicle for Jack Black's zany humor. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyKeith StaskiewiczDec 24, 2010
Strips the source material down to its recognizable parts and then builds something completely new out of them. Unfortunately, the result is entirely Lilliputian in ambition, even for a children's movie. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicScott CravenDec 24, 2010
It might have worked, too, if Black had anything remotely funny to work with. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttDec 22, 2010
While not the worst in recent 3D films, Gulliver's Travels is more gimmicky than a crackling good yarn. Read full review
40
Boxoffice MagazinePam GradyDec 22, 2010
A movie that ought to entice people to want to travel with Gulliver instead inveigles them to run from him. Read full review
40
EmpireAnna SmithDec 22, 2010
A low-grade comedy that'll have Jonathan Swift turning in his grave. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 25, 2010
Murderously unfunny. Read full review
38
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottDec 25, 2010
The really annoying thing about Jack Black's Gulliver's Travels is not so much that it's a bad movie -- it is bad, but only run-of-the-mill bad, not epic-misfire bad -- but that the movie sullies a piece of literature that has endured for nearly 300 years for the sake of a cheap kiddie flick that'll be forgotten in a month. Read full review
38
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreDec 25, 2010
The villains are weak and the narrative has little drive to it. Read full review
38
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 24, 2010
Loosely - very loosely - based on the classic Jonathan Swift story, "Gulliver's Travels" begins promisingly but quickly loses its way. Read full review
38
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 23, 2010
The only arena in which Gulliver's Travels plays an adequate game is in visual effects. Read full review
30
VarietyPeter DebrugeDec 22, 2010
The story grows more desperate as it goes on. Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter TraversJan 7, 2011
At one point, Black puts out a fire by pissing on it. It's my job as a critic to piss on this dumb excuse for a movie. Consider it done. Read full review
25
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanDec 25, 2010
Unnecessary and unfunny re-imagining of the classic satire by Jonathan Swift. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisDec 24, 2010
A migraine inducement that you'd think Jack Black had gotten out of his system years ago. Yet he still finds an excuse to wear a blazer and shorts and fling his bodily orb like Angus Young on Guitar Hero night at the neighborhood bar. Read full review
20
Time OutDavid FearDec 22, 2010
Those of us who dig the comedian's hyperactive persona may feel that the meter is now officially running on his amiable rocker-doofus act; everyone else will simply marvel that a Christmas season could produce such an unfunny, unentertaining lump of coal. Read full review
16
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinDec 25, 2010
With deadening predictability, the filmmakers have reduced a definitive satire about the flaws and foibles of human nature into family-friendly sub-Disney pabulum about an affable slacker who finally musters up the courage to ask a pretty girl at work for a date. Read full review
0
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenDec 30, 2010
Listless, dull, and totally lacking in spectacle. Read full review
0
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 23, 2010
The 3-D is cheesy (2.2-D at best) the gags are gross (Gulliver urinates on an 18th-century palace to extinguish a fire) and the production abandons all hope of coherence when the hero fights a climactic battle with a giant robot out of "Transformers." Read full review
0
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 21, 2010
A movie of such stupendous uninspiration that, watching it, I didn't know whether to be affronted or hornswoggled. Movies this monumentally dreadful, after all, don't come along every day. Read full review
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