The Gulliver's Travels Trailer: Where the Laughs Are Lilliputia

You most likely didn't have high hopes for Gulliver's Travels anyway -- the poster looks like one of those spoof movies in Tropic Thunder -- but goodness is this trailer truly awful. It would be tempting to wonder how far Jack Black has fallen, but since he did star in Year One all bets are clearly off.

The trouble starts for Gulliver's Travels almost immediately, when Black is playing with some Star Wars action figures and doing the Darth Vader voice. Since maybe people forgot Tommy Boy existed. After that "joke," the plot machinations grind into place: Black's Gulliver works in the mailroom at a magazine, has a crush on Amanda Peet's travel editor, decides to plagiarize a story to get noticed and winds up headed to the Caribbean to cover a story on the Bermuda Triangle. A few Perfect Storm-like wave crashes later, and he's in Lilliputia, surrounded by some very silly looking CGI-miniaturized sets and people.

Again, it's just a trailer, but: Did anyone at 20th Century Fox actually think those effects worked? Because they don't. Neither do most of the jokes -- though Romany Malco does get at least two laughs. Fun fact: Because of her contract with Fox for The Devil Wears Prada, Emily Blunt was forced to drop out of Iron Man 2 -- she was replaced by Scarlett Johansson -- to co-star in Gulliver's Travels. And, as you can tell from her face, she was thrilled to get the news.

VERDICT: Pass.