djeimizco04 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.

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.

ccthemovieman-1 At two hours, this could have been a very good movie but at three hours?? No, that's at minimum 40 minutes too long. The first hour of this is very good but after that it slowly loses steam. The flashback scenes are almost all interesting but when it gets back to the "current" story, Ted Danson drones on and on and on, trying to convince an unbelieving audience. By then, the viewer gets frustrated wondering if Danson's character "Lemuel Gulliver" will ever be believed and the conniving lying Dr. Bates (played well by James Fox) will ever be exposed for who and what he is.It's a very clean-language movie since it was a mini-series for television, and few people can argue with the "peace and love" message, but the it's long and frustrating to watch more than once.

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