Gulliver's Travels

Little Fockers earned top honors at the box office this weekend, but the victory wasn't so sweet. Overall, the holiday weekend estimates were down 45% from last year (which included juggernauts Avatar and Sherlock Holmes). The third Meet the Parents film took in $34 million, followed by the debut of the Coen brothers' True Grit with $25.6 million. Last week's champ, Tron: Legacy, finished third with $20.1 million, followed by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader at $10.8 million. To close out the top five, Yogi Bear finished with $8.8 million.

As for other note-worthy performances (both good and bad): Gulliver's Travels suffered (perhaps from abysmal reviews) opened with a mere $7.2 million. On the other hand, The King's Speech reaped the benefits of a wider release, climbing from No. 11 to No. 14 with $4.5 million.

I had hoped that a modernization of Jonathan's Swift classic Gulliver's Travels would be an opportunity to introduce a younger audience to the tale. I was skeptical but optimistic when Jack Black, the king of butt-crack humor, was cast in the title role in the 2010 version. Black plays Lemuel Gulliver, a mail room clerk for a big-city newspaper. His career and love life are stalled until a coworker tells him he's already hit his peak. Spurred on to make a change, Gulliver accidentally signs up for a writing assignment from the travel editor, his crush Darcy (Amanda Peet).

Alarmingly, the assignment is in the Bermuda Triangle, and after embarking on the dangerous-sounding adventure, Gulliver ends up in a monster storm and wakes up on the island of Lilliput. As the story goes, he's the tallest man among a populace of tiny people and is imprisoned as a beast until he proves useful to the Lilliputians. The literary framework of the story provides lots of chances to update it — make it newer, funnier, more current — but the effort falls as hard as the clumsy Gulliver.

To find out why I didn't enjoy Gulliver's Travels, just read more

Whether or not you've actually read Jonathan's Swift's Gulliver's Travels, you're probably familiar with the novel's most famous imagery: a giant man being held captive by tiny people. The story has had countless adaptations (the one I remember most is the TV version starring Ted Danson), and now Jack Black takes on the Lilliputians in the upcoming modern-day retelling of the tale.

This time around, Lemuel Gulliver (Black) is a bottom feeder at a travel writing company who decides to take on his first real assignment in order to impress a fellow co-worker (Amanda Peet). You can guess what happens next: an investigation into the Bermuda Triangle goes awry, and Gulliver ends up all tied up on the island of Lilliput. We don't get to see much of the actual adventure in the trailer (even co-stars Jason Segel and Emily Blunt only make very brief appearances here), but it gives a pretty good taste of what we can expect: classic Jack Black trying to befriend tiny humans. I didn't find the preview to be particularly side-splitting, but I'll keep an eye on it since I kinda love the cast. Check it out for yourself when you read more