If you saw the trailers (the many, many trailers) for this one, then you might think you saw the whole movie. This is, ordinarily, my main problem with trailers, and why I hate them so unreservedly -- in this case, the trailers just did not do it justice. Indeed, they may have even helped enhance my experience of this movie, since I went in with such low expectations, so sure I wouldn’t be seeing anything new, that I was mightily, wondrously surprised.

This movie is hilarious, and I defy anyone who says otherwise. And all of the high profile actors in it (many of them particular favorites of mine) are really, really fun to watch. Amanda Peet is luminous, Emily Blunt regal, Jason Segel adorable (dodgy English accent and all), The I. T. Crowd’s Chris O’Dowd just so, so funny and Billy Connolly… well, he’s just kind of Billy Connolly here, which is always worth seeing. And even if you’ve never quite forgiven our star, Jack Black, for Shallow Hal, you must admit that he can be pure comic gold – although I will note that he does seem to find a way to get a guitar in his hands every time he steps in front of a camera (except in The Holiday… in that, he played the piano!).

But our story: Black plays Lemuel Gulliver, mail room lackey for too long at a large daily paper, with a thoroughly understandable crush on Amanda Peet. Dared to ask her on a date, instead he ends up with a writing assignment to Bermuda, which happens to me all the time. Apparently, in this movie world, a newspaper is able to foot the bill for an all-expenses paid three week trip to the Bermuda Triangle for a puff piece penned by a former mailroom slacker plagiarist. And this, when actual newspaper sales have fallen so much that Drew Barrymore couldn’t even get a job in New York in order to be with Justin Long (yes, I just made a Going the Distance reference. Shut up, it’s a good movie). Soon he is on his way and shipwrecked in an unknown land, awakening to find himself held captive by an army of teeny, tiny people.

Gasp! I had no idea that was going to happen? Color me gob-smacked, confounded and amazed! Wait… this movie wouldn’t have anything to do with that Jonathan Swift novel Gulliver’s Travels, would it? Huh. Who knew?

Anyway, imprisoned in a cave that the Lilliputians -- for such they are -- must consider the size of the Grand Canyon (and yet have inexplicably placed their miniature-sized jail in, as well) Gulliver meets fellow inmate Horatio (Segel), whose only crime was to dare a glance at the Princess Mary (Blunt). Her highness is engaged to the pompous General Edward Edwardian (O’Dowd), who is one of the movie’s main highlights. Chris O’Dowd, as cranky slacker Roy in The I. T. Crowd, is ever a treat; here, as an aristocratic buffoon, he is utterly brilliant, perfectly delivering many of the best lines in the film. (Which, yes, is saying something. Whatever you may have heard about this movie, the dialogue is not to be blamed.)

After saving the King of Lilliput from a fire -- the crudest part of proceedings, by the way -- Gulliver spins stories of his illustrious past (President, captain of the Millennium Falcon, doomed Jack from Titanic, composer of “Sweet Child o’ Mine”) and is given responsibility for Lilliput’s defenses, much to General Edward’s chagrin. Our hero then gives Horatio some bad advice concerning the Princess and invents Lilliput Rockband, after which the movie kind of descends into a kind of Godzilla/Land of the Giants/romantic comedy/musical mash-up. Which is perfectly okay by me.

The real funny in this movie, apart from the performances -- which really are just ridiculously good, for this kind of thing -- comes from the anachronism. In the original 18th-c Swift version, the civilized peoples Gulliver encountered were of much the same technological and societal advancement as he (except for the Houyhnhnms – those horse people were way ahead of their time… and, indeed, ours), but in this updated attempt, the Lilliputians are charmingly archaic, and their social order firmly feudal. Imagine throwing Jack Black, whether in School of Rock, Tenacious D or even Be Kind, Rewind form, into a Merchant Ivory production co-written by Richard Curtis and Judd Apatow and performed by animatronic Polly Pocket dolls, and you may have an inkling of a morsel of a suggestion of an idea what this movie is like.

It’s absurd. It’s stupid fun. And in the end, when Gulliver gets home, the job and the girl, you can almost see a kind of knowing smirk in Black’s eye, as though he’s aware of the ridiculousness of this whole thing but is inviting us to not think too much about it and accept that we’ve just spent a couple of hours being thoroughly entertained by this nonsense -- and now are kind of ashamed of ourselves for having liked it so much.

Or maybe that was just me.

  -- Rachel Hyland