Oldguypo8 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.

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.

[email protected] Swift's socialism and pacifism come through against all odds in this well done remake. (Did you know there is no hyphen after "well"? Fact.) He meets warlike miniatures, socialist giants, head-in-the-clouds (literally) philosophers, and pacifist horses who rule over Yahoos -- nearly neanderthal humanoids. (Is that where "yahoo" came from?) We also meet the dastardly Dr. Bates, the devoted Mary Gulliver, the sweet and devoted son Thomas, and the full cast of a truly horrific 19th century lunatic asylum. Suspension of disbelief comes easily, and our 7- and 12-year-old girls enjoyed it as much as my husband and I did. (Sorry for the length, IMDb requires 10 lines.)

miniwidge I guess I have to write something here, although I think my one summary says it all. I'm not a huge Ted Danson fan... nothing against the man, just hasn't "done it" for me. This covers the sides of Swift's novel that were never covered before. You can tell the cast was having a wonderful time filming this.