User Reviews

This production was quite well done for a television original, providing a very appropriate original slant on Swift's work. To make the frame story work well the film begins with Gulliver arriving home. Everyone who has read the book knows that will happen anyway. The frame story of the book has Gulliver's crazed confusion in sections. For example, he is horrified that he will trample little people in England because he has just returned from a land of giants. But the film has all the book sections within one long voyage. When Gulliver narrates his travels the editing cuts from England to the travel are very effective. I confess I found them intrusive and irritating at first, then they became natural. By the end, moreover, they have become a welcome addition to the story. As he tells his adventures to a larger and larger audience, more and more people listen to his compelling fantasy even though they doubt its truth. For example, his hatred of filthy Yahoos and admiration of pure logic from the fourth section comes across well when he is defending his own sanity. The intercuts between events in England and similar events or scenes in the tale is very effective. For example, ripping the cloth from the table to suggest the motion of towing a group of ships is inspired filming. The addition of Gulliver's family threatened by the lecherous doctor works well. Swift only hints at this by having the long-suffering wife protest against further voyages. It becomes a natural part of this story. The casting and acting were competent throughout. Some roles were exemplary. Omar Sharif's mad magician is superb. O'Toole's little emperor is doddering delightfully toward senility. Many specific complaints made by other writers here strike me as simple personal preference, which, after all, is what we are about here. I read the abridged version several times a year from fourth grade on. I may have escaped the complete version until a college class but have read it a few times since. And I had to start it again as I began reading about this film. While the Danson version is superior to any previous film, it does not replace the book. However, I think it will bring many readers to the book. If you have not read the book, enjoy this movie then go to the source. If you appreciate the satire in it, find Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and his "Drapier's Letters." Both are satires attacking the wretched treatment of Ireland and the Irish during Swift's time. The drapier protests cheap, inflated copper coins being dumped on Ireland. These were Wood's light weight coinage, not good for face value in paying taxes and official debts. The outcry from Swift's satire caused the coins to be sent to another mistreated British territory, the American colonies. The universal satire in Swift's book and this movie just poke fun; they cannot change human nature. Give Danson's torturous experiences a chance. I think you will find them thought provoking and entertaining.

The mini-series fully deserves 10 stars. The framing device - Gulliver comes back from sea, tells a wild tale of his experiences, is committed to an asylum, tells further wild tales on further occasions, and is finally vindicated - has no foundation in the book, but neither does it alter the substance of the tales Swift wrote. Another major change is in the ending.

Unlike so many adaptations, the film tells of all four of Gulliver's voyages - it is not limited to Lilliput and Brobdingnag. The first and second are altered by having Gulliver's voyage from Lilliliput end, not in rescue by an English ship, but in landfall on the Brobdingnagian coast. It is implied that the two lands are a considerable distance apart, but the book has Lilliput and its enemy Blefuscu lie in the Indian Ocean, whereas Brobdingnag is a peninsula off the coast of Alaska. The deviation is an intelligent piece of adaptation, and typical of the care taken by the adaptors to make a film of the book, rather than of something rather distantly based on it.

Special props to Warwick Davis, who turned in a thoroughly convincing performance as Gulliver's dwarf tormentor at the Brobdingnagian court, and to Tom Sturridge: that Gulliver has a son is sort of implied, since the book says he has children.

Ted Danson made the part of Gulliver his own. He inhabited it as thoroughly as Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett have inhabited that of Sherlock Holmes.

Lemuel Gulliver (Ted Danson) is a doctor who goes missing at sea, leaving pregnant wife Mary (Mary Steenburgen) behind. Eight years later, he turns up, disheveled and seemingly mad - babbling about his adventures in the lands of the tiny Lilliputians, the giant Brobdingnags, the floating island of the intellectual Laputa, and the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent, talking horses who have to deal with the Yahoos - a race of bestial humans - among many other adventures. The not-so-good Dr. Bates (James Fox), who has designs on Lemuel's wife, has Gulliver incarcerated in a mental institution, and Lemuel, Mary, and son Thomas (Tom Sturridge) must find a way to prove his sanity.

A splendid adaptation of Jonathan Swift's satirical novel, this film is a magnificent adaptation on so many levels: the story, the satire, the characters, the visuals, the brilliant cast. It's simply a treat to watch, and it's almost amazing considering that it was a made-for-TV film.

The film does a brilliant job of capturing Swift's vicious satire, which cuts like a hatchet through British society of the time, but still resonates today. The wise Brobdingnags and the Houyhnhnms are almost perfect individuals who find it virtually impossible to understand why Gulliver speaks with such pride of the vices and corruptions of his society. The scenes where Gulliver struggles to prove himself different from the Yahoos are perhaps the best, with biting satire in describing how they pick their leaders ("they seem to pick the worst among them. . . who rules until they find someone even worse"), go to war ("We only go to war for a very good reason - such as they are weaker than us, or we want all of their land"), etc. The scenes involving Laputa are also effectively done - the intellectuals are so wrapped up in their specialized fields that they have no time for anything else, and really possess little common sense. And the addition of the asylum plot line enhances the story greatly - Dr. Bates is truly nasty character, and when he gives a speech to the inquiry on Gulliver's alleged vices, it's quite clear that he's describing his own faults.

The film makes use of beautiful, and fairly convincing CGI effects depicting the very diverse settings of the novel with great effect. The contrast of sizes is done in a very skillful way, and all of the worlds depicted in the story are convincing in their own way. The cinematography (particularly that concerning the asylum) and the costumes are brilliantly done. The editing of the present with Lemuel's memories is a device which could be awkward, but works very well.

The cast is truly wonderful; a veritable who's-who of British and American talent. Ted Danson gives an excellent, multi-layered performance as Gulliver, showing effectively his transformation from a person bewildered by his strange surroundings, to the lunatic state he was in when he reappears, to his rational, intellectual personality at the end. Most well-known for his work on sit-com, Danson shows that he's more than just Sam Malone with this wonderful serio-comic performance. Mary Steenburgen is effective as his wife, and James Fox is absolutely repulsive as Bates. The rest of the cast is made up mostly of cameos, with Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Warwick Davis, Kristin Scott Thomas, Geraldine Chaplin, Alfre Woodward, Edward Fox, and Sir John Gielgud being the most memorable - but even the smallest parts are very well-played.

While not 100% faithful to the book, "Gulliver's Travels" is a triumph of story and images. It's not to be missed.

9/10

Considering the rubbish Hallmark has come up with since, it's easy to forget how good this was. As an adaptation of the book, this is easily the best version, and is the only version to include all four parts of the book. (I do have one reservation, which will be addressed). Obviously, some satirical points are lost, as the book contains many 'topical' references to persons and occurrences from the early 18th Century which would go completely unnoticed nowadays by anyone who has not made an academic study of the book. The book had Gulliver make four separate voyages to each land, but here (as in most versions that include more than one part) Gulliver discovers all the lands in one long voyage. Whilst this removes a reasonably important aspect of the book's framing device (The progressively worse treatment of Gulliver by the ships crews reflect Gulliver's own estrangement from the human race) it does make the film flow better. The films own framing device allows much more information to be imparted, although I do believe too much time is spent on the back-story accompanying it.

The Lilliputian and Brobdingnagian segments are very well done- all the major points covered in the book are dealt with very economically. It is with the next part that my reservation arises. Laputa, the Academy and the Glubbdubdrib necromancy are very well adapted, but the depiction of the immortal Struldbruggs show an incredible lack of courage. In the book, the Struldbruggs are cursed with immortality, but not eternal youth and depicts gibbering, desiccated husks millennia old. Here, the 'curse' of immortality is simply blindness, and totally betrays the book. However, this remains the first time (to my knowledge) that the Houyhnhnms section has been filmed, a section that has given Swift a reputation (probably undeserved) of being a misanthrope). Here, the odious Yahoos are kept as vile as they are in the book and, although the impact of the ending has been softened, the blow is still there.

The film is very well done indeed, with perfect art design, costuming and atmospheric direction by Sturridge- the Glubbdubdrib section is brilliantly eerie. Ted Danson is nothing short of fantastic, in a studied yet emotional performance. Steenbergen is less memorable, but still effective. The star-studded supporting cast impresses throughout, especially to O'Toole's Lilliputian Emperor and Nicholas Lyndhurst's Clustril (it is oddly satisfying to have a lead actor in 'Cheers' sharing scenes with a lead actor from 'Only Fools and Horses!) The music is perfect, with the rousing theme music, the Indian- influenced but otherworldly Laputan music and the primitive percussion of the Yahoo sections.

In summary, this is a great, though qualified success. There will never be a film version that does full justice to the book, but this is as close as we're probably going to get.