Who payed the critics

the audience applauded

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Me-oh-my! - You know, it sure takes watching a 1960 Fantasy/Adventure picture just like this one to really make one realize just how totally spoiled we all are by today's CG imagery. Yep. We sure are.And, if the creaky, old-school visual effects here weren't hokey enough as it is - Unfortunately - This picture's story-line was also a really irksome affair like nothing you could ever imagine.It sure seemed to me that no matter which world Gulliver travelled to - Be it the big or the small - Everyone was forever bickering and complaining and finding yet another lame excuse for going to war with one another.... Sheesh! - Give me break, already!.... I can't begin to tell you how fed-up I got with all of this utter nonsense.I mean, had the story been an interesting one, then, yes, I could have easily forgiven its laughable special effects - But, between the plot and the visuals it was all just second-rate entertainment from start to finish.

Jack Sher directed this kid-friendly version of the famous novel by Jonathan Swift, which stars Kerwin Mathews as Dr. Gulliver, who hates being poor, so signs on a ship headed to India to make his fortune. Sadly, he is washed overboard in a storm, and finds himself in the land of Liliput, where he is a giant to the miniature human inhabitants. At first treated as a threat, he is later made a hero, though the paranoid and ungrateful emperor turns against him when Gulliver refuses to help him win a remarkably trivial war against his neighbors, who aren't much better either... Good F/X by Ray Harryhausen, but film is otherwise uninspired and forgettable, though some of the novel's satire does remain, just not enough.

KERWIN MATHEWS makes a handsome but dull Gulliver in this somewhat slow moving, corny adaptation of Jonathan Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS which might be better visited by watching the old Max Fleischer cartoon that came out during the year of SNOW WHITE.Ray Harryhausen provides the special effects monsters, but it's strictly the sort of romp you might want your kids to watch before encouraging them to read the actual Swift story with all of its biting satire intact. With today's CGI effects so markedly superior, there's a datedness about the film (made in 1960) that gives it a "quaint" quality.The story doesn't really take off until Gulliver is washed overboard at sea, landing among the little people as in the original tale. The sequence where he's tied up by the Lilliputians on the beach is remarkably well handled, as he finds himself the pawn of quarreling royalties. Yet, he manages to get them to release him from his bonds. He proves his worth to them and they think of him as their invincible weapon.The story follows the familiar pattern of other "Gulliver" films, with the "giant" interacting with the little people and settling issues of morality and justice with occasional bits of sermonizing.Should appeal to kids with its fascinating trick photography and handsome Technicolor trappings, enhanced by the delightful Bernard Herrmann score. But adults had better beware. They might find themselves losing interest after the first half-hour.

This would be a good one for the kids: I found it to be a tad slow and corny. It did have good special effects, but the acting wasn't all that good. A pretty good lesson in how narrow minded folks are and mistrustful of anything that is different than they. Not a bad film, just wasn't my cup of tea.