Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Steineded How sad is this?

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

jdhooker When was 8 or so, my dad bought this mini-series for me without completely knowing what it was. He knew the gist of course, tiny people island, big metaphorical plot, good self observing message, but this was quite more then that. It had great acting first off. The guy who plays Gulliver and the women who plays his wife are actually married in real life, so that kind of makes things cool. I also watched without understanding that it went beyond big guy in little world. It goes far beyond Lilleputt, into other uncharted regions, and undiscovered islands that are absolutely astounding-watch out for the big underlining meanings their awesome. I would recommend the viewer to consider this like going to theater- its not a big budget movie or anything-its a 90s mini series-buts a heck of 90s mini series!!!

abunudnik Cultural Vandalism Is the new Hallmark production of Gulliver's Travels an act of cultural vandalism? Not literally. After all, not a single copy of the book is burned. But if this is the only Gulliver people are exposed to—and to many it will be—those people will not get anything like what Jonathan Swift intended. Were Jonathan Swift alive, Hallmark could be sued for moral rights violations and they'd lose. That's a good way to think before starting a project using someone else's ideas.Swift's masterpiece is an extraordinary vision of humanity. Through his hero, Gulliver, he travels to places that make him feel big, small, shat on and… human. The little people in Lilleput are small in every way. Petty and stupid, they fight, the big-enders and little- enders, interminable wars of annihilation over which end of their soft-boiled eggs are opened at the breakfast table. Sounds a bit like us.I forget most of the rest: it's been years since I read it. The TV show reminded me of a few things and, on the bright side, it made me want to read it again.This gift to mankind has been shat on, like Gulligan under the boughs beneath the vulgar yahoos, and Danson, Steenbergen and especially two great actors, Peter O'Toole and Edward Fox, ought to be thoroughly ashamed. Some "Creative Person" got the bright idea to put the focus on "the star:" Gulliver, played by Ted Danson, whose acting is just plain bad. He portrays Gulliver as insane. All his travels were made up. Weeeeel. Yeeeaaah! Of course Swift made up Gulliver! Naturally, the lands he visited were imaginary: that's called fiction. His purpose was to talk about humankind and our, often awful, relations with each other. The travels of his imaginary character to imaginary lands is his method. But these people treat imagination as a disease and anyone who has a moment that Hallmark couldn't turn into one of its anodyne cards is suspect.I can sure see why Hallmark would produce this crap. It's so bad that O'Toole, always profound, seems as little as his Lilliputian character. He's in character, of course, while commenting on the character simultaneously, as many, if not all great actors do. Informing the character sheds light on it. Our light completes the character. It becomes three dimensional through this act of psychic triangulation. Most actors do this very subtly, like Hopkins in "The Remains of the Day." Others, like Nicholson, in most things in the last twenty years, play the two parts pretty broadly apart. Nicholson actually plays on the relationship of his two points and with us too: with him it's all cat's cradle and he, chuckling away, holds all the strings. Great fun, as is O'Toole. But something here is lacking. He is shouting into a megaphone (as great as ever) and all one senses is a hollow shell standing under him.That's because it is. Look up "anodyne" and there ought to be the word "Hallmark" as a synonym. Harmless, bland, inoffensive: Hallmark is the doll who can't pee because she has no genitals: it is the norm, the average, the person of no distinction. Hallmark's hallmark is to have no hallmark. I never suspected that such people despise those who have imagination quite so much. Suddenly, Pound's "Disney against the meta-physicals" stands out in bold type. Or Einstein's "Men of genius always will be violently opposed by mediocre minds." Indeed, anyone, to this mediocre type, who has an answer to any question other than "a)" or "b)" is suspect. Who more distinctive then that a man who journeys to the darker places of the human soul and shines his little flashlight to illuminate what can be found there? Hence the act of vandalism. The Taliban destroyed the Buddhas in Afghanistan, the Palestinians the oldest synagogue in the world at Jericho, the barbarians the great statuary of the Classical age and these things are obviously vandalism. Hallmark endeavors to protect us from foreign foes by undermining our own culture; the one that feeds and sustains them. And us.Please buy a copy of Gulliver's Travels wherever you live, and read it. Or order it online. I like to use ABE Books.

Prof_Lostiswitz Swift's writing really has more in common with Kafka and Orwell than with fantasy-adventure writers, so it's curious that Gulliver's Travels has been deemed a children's novel. Lucky kiddies!The same applies to this movie. There have been some really awful versions of this story, which must be why people are reluctant to look at this version. I mean, it's a TV-movie and it comes from muppetteer Jim Henson, so how should we expect anything but cuteness?Look again - beauty turns up in the oddest places. Children love this movie enough to sit through all three hours of it, but it also takes the time to get Swift's dark vision right. I hate special effects, but here they are used to carry the story forward instead of just dazzling us. Please note that the producers took the trouble to recruit classical actors like John Gielgud and Peter O'Toole who perform their eccentric roles with perfection.Dramatically, the romance between Gulliver and Glumdalclitch is rendered touching and poignant, as well as funny (she's a little girl, but twenty times his size). The frame-story has a theme about absent fathers that many children will relate to. And the part about Gulliver in the asylum introduces an element of horror dealing with the abuse of authority (apparently deriving from Val Lewton's "Bedlam" [1946], another forgotten masterpiece).The VHS is always turning up in the bargain-bin for a few cents, which is an insult to the many great artists who put this thing together. I encourage audiences to recognize a good thing by getting this movie and inspiring others to watch it. Although it has a lot to offer children, grown-ups will find that it stands up nicely to such classics as Aguirre, Brazil, 1984 and other serious fantastic works.Much of it was filmed in Portugal, I was looking up the various palaces involved- Sintra- -Monserrate(Laputa) -Queluz(Brobdingnag) -Ribafria Palace (Sorcerer's Palace, I think) -Castle of the Moors(Struldbrugs) Lisbon- -Ajuda(Burning Palace, Lilliput) Mafra- -Royal Palace and streetscapes (Lilliput) -Sea Cliffs (Brobdingnag and Lilliput) The Doctor's Mansion is obviously in the Cotswold limestone district... anyone recognize it? The final shot is modelled after the Paul Nash painting "Landscape from a Dream", surrealism seems right for a movie like this. www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nash-landscape-from- a-dream-n05667

modius This is an exceptional adaptadation of the book. An all-star cast which gives merit and worthwhile to the tv-film and Danson in his best performance yet as a sailor who becomes lost at sea, only to return some years later a different man - a man who has learnt alot of humanity in his journey's and a man casted as insane.Throughout the movie you don't know whether Danson's character is sane or not. The amazing effects and direction make it a marvel to watch. The all-star cast enjoy their roles to the hilt.The sequences within the asylum are disturbing, as are Danson's twisted hatred on humans, and what they have become. And in some aspects the thought-provoking stories that Gulliver went through can still be adapted today.For example the "we drink when we are not thirsty and eat when we are not hungry" is a typically haunting line. The social commentary which underlines the novel and indeed this film can still be used and adapted today.This is a thought-provoking, well made TV-film that is very enjoyable, and I recommend you watch it.My Rating: 8/10