Movie review: Gulliver's Travels "Small jobs, small people"

Maybe the reason why it's hard to reach our dreams is because we had wished to have another life.

If you were given a chance to rewrite your story--your life--how would you start and end it? Somehow this remains a question and not a chance at all. But not for Lemuel Gulliver (Jack Black), after he made the worst and awful move to woo his longtime crush Darcy (Amanda Peet). From Jonathan Swift's classic novel Gulliver's Travels (2010, directed by Rob Letterman), we discover a world where Old English people resemble ants: tiny, hardworking and funny.

Even though he's very good with words, Gulliver couldn't have the guts to mingle with people, preventing him to be promoted and even to make a move with his crush Darcy. After trying to impress her with a fake resume saying he'd already traveled the whole world, he instead ended up in another world called Lilliput, and made a whole new life he'd always dreamed of.

As Gulliver piled lie after lie saying he's the president in his kingdom called Manhattan while resembling his life with Anakin's story in Star Wars and Jack's in Titanic, he realized how much he had thought lowly of his old life and felt the invincible power as a giant, only to discover in the end he'd hurt "the small people who have grown very large in his heart".

On the other hand, the movie brought me to a lot of laughs, especially when Gulliver saved the king (Billy Connolly) by taking a leak to the building on fire, and when he was banished from Lilliput and became a girl's barbie doll in an abandoned island. Because it's Jack Black, the classical Gulliver's Travels became a more exciting and hilarious musicale with popular songs like "Rock and Roll All Nite" by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of Kiss, "Listen to Mama" by Walkerman and "War" by Norman J. Whitfield and Barrett Strong.

I was also inspired by Gulliver's positive outlook by "posting" his dreams (like his dream home) on his bedroom wall, so he could see it everyday and be equally inspired to reach it. And he actually did.

At one point in our lives, we may dream and wish to have another life because we're too "small", but let's not forget how wonderful ours is because we're "big" enough to RULE IT.

Movie review: Gnomeo and Juilet "Shakespeare Betrayed"

Shakespeare was not consulted for the ending part.

We just love happy endings, and even though William Shakespeare's legendary and classical Romeo and Juliet was highly patronized in the early ages, we are clearly not from the early ages. Translated and portrayed in many ways, now Romeo and Juliet are disguised as garden gnomes--and the rest of their colliding families, too.

We look back at our boring Literature classes and barely recalled why the lovers killed themselves, and finally laugh at the release of Gnomeo and Juliet (directed by Kelly Asbury). The typical love story unfolds: Gnomeo (James McAvoy) meets Juliet (Emily Blunt) one night while they both looked for the fateful wild flower. The conflict goes with a meaningless "We can't be. She's a Red and I'm a Blue.", and the rest of the classical lovers' hide-outs and secret meetings, of course.

The movie was entertaining as it featured Elton John songs with the humor atmosphere leaving us falling off our seats. What I loved the most was the scene when Gnomeo was consulting the Shakespeare statue, and argued to the author they should have a happy ending. Shakespeare replied it simply couldn't be because his tragic ending became phenomenal.

I remember such love stories specially exist in our afternoon teleserye shows, where parents and the environment are the major enemies while lovers think they know everything and set off for an adventure on their own. With the population booming at a shocking rate, the youth tend to seek and patronize such fantasies rarely found in the real world, take the risk and hurt themselves in the end.

Reading the real story of Romeo and Juliet, it's actually laudable for its originality and exotic twist in the ending. The story, I believe, should not be criticized for its tragic and "culturally unacceptable" ending, but rather praised for its innovative style in writing a love story. 

What I loved the most about the movie, though, was its main aim to reawaken us kids about a classical and significant masterpiece in history.