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Bits of the book can come across a bit dry. Swift seems to take great pleasure in describing things in great detail. In places, Swift’s exhaustive descriptions are extremely effective at drawing in a reader, but the author’s relentless pursuit of detail makes for a very unevenly paced story. Swift’s biggest success will all of the excessive description lies in his ability to make the fantasy seem believable.

The politics of Lilliput are, of course, hopelessly convoluted. The two major political parties seem drawn entirely from the technique one should use when cracking open an egg. Those who believe an egg should be cracked on the large end are mortal enemies of those who believe an egg should be cracked on the small end. Swift populates Lilliput with numerous such absurdities. It’s a lot of fun when it’s not tedious. As Gulliver gets more and more entrenched in local politics, he quickly becomes a major weapon against the enemy nation of Belfuscu. In a storyline that predates the invention of nuclear weapons by over 200 years, Gulliver uses his tremendous size to quickly win a naval battle against Blefuscu. When he refuses to help the Lilliputians completely overtake Blefuscu, things begin to get a bit sour. It isn’t long before Gulliver manages to find a way off the island — which launches the tale into its second of four parts.

With naval conditions being particularly rough, Gulliver is forced to weigh anchor in an unknown land, which ends up being populated by giants. The land of Brobdingnag consists of those over 70 feet tall. No less fantastic than his time in Lilliput, Gulliver’s fortunes are reversed. Here he is something of a curiosity — no longer the major, influential force he had become between Lilliput and Blefuscu.

As things progress, Gulliver is captured again and rediscovered by sailors bound for England - a journey cut short by attacking pirates who strand him on an island. He is soon rescued by an island in the sky — a nation known as Laputa. It is devoted to music and mathematics, but completely incapable of finding any practical use for such things. And so the adventure continues.

Gulliver’s journeys cover a lot of thematic space. Numerous intellectual concerns are raised in the book in interesting ways. At its best, these relatively dull moments of academic intellectual pursuits are paired against a backdrop of some fantastic land. Appealing to both intellectuals and those interested in a good adventure, the book does an admirable job of reaching both audiences.

The Movie

The film distances itself from Swift’s book right away. Set in contemporary times, the film stars Jack Black as a slacker who works in the mailroom for a newspaper in New York. The character of Gulliver in the book is never explored in all that much depth beyond what happens to him. Far more character-based, the film spends the first third of its roughly 90 minutes establishing the character of Gulliver before he embarks on his journey. While not entirely at ease here, Black delivers a screen presence that’s charming enough to carry a more character-driven adaptation of the story. We meet Black’s Gulliver as he is showing around a new employee who will be working with him. Black’s slacker personality is contrasted against the upward mobility of his savvy of his trainee. A failed attempt at asking out the editor of the travel section turns into an assignment to travel to the Bermuda Triangle as a travel writer. This finds Gulliver traveling alone on a tiny boat into extremely bad weather. When he wakes, he has been tied down by Lilliputians and we are just over a half an hour into the film.

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