Gulliver’s Travels (1939)
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Gulliver’s Travels Movie Review
Gulliver’s Travels is a 1939 animated fantasy musical film directed by Dave Fleischer. It is one of the earliest US animated features and a peculiar picture indeed.
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“There’s a giant on the beach“
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There is a lot to be said about this movie, but first and foremost let’s analyze the plot. It focuses only on the Lilliput section of the book as most adaptations unfortunately do, but thankfully it also depicts the war with Blefuscu, though the reasoning for war is changed to that of a dispute over a wedding song. That was done suitably enough given that the movie is a musical.
I found the storytelling serviceable. More could have been done with this storyline, but ultimately the silly war is funny and some scenes are genuinely well crafted in terms of imagination and world building. Lilliput was fantastically put together and full of wonderful little details that do make an impact on the viewer.
The character development is also just okay, though some do impress. Gulliver himself is very dull and the fact that they had big plans for him inside the studio makes me question that decision as this protagonist is by far the weaker character in the film, which is problematic given that he’s the highlight of the novel itself.
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I liked Gabby to a degree. He can be annoying, but the great Pinto Colvig voiced him, which was awesome. The prince and the princess had some gorgeously composed scenes in terms of music and animation, but they are as bland as they could possibly be, thus their romance is very forgettable. The highlights are easily the two kings of these kingdoms, both very enjoyable and quite amusing. I also liked the three spies – Sneak, Snoop and Snitch, though they reminded me too much of the dwarfs from ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’.
Which brings me to my next and most important point – this film is such a rip-off of that classic Disney feature in so many scenes that I simply could not believe what I was seeing. You see, being the second US animated feature, the studio did not exactly know how to position themselves in the animation arena, and as is always the case with early history in any art, they tried to replicate the success of the first player on the scene.
While those similarities were appealing at first as I myself adore ‘Snow White’, I still ended up being annoyed by most of them, especially the gags and animation of the spies almost stealing the ones from the dwarfs. The operatic songs are also clearly influenced by that film and so much animation is pretty much recycled from it that it made me question how they could ever have gotten away with this copyright infringement.
Gulliver’s Travels still has two things going for it and those are the animation and the score. Yes, despite some recycled moments, the animation is still a delight. The character designs were quite strong while some of the imagery was genuinely memorable and impressively imagined. The polished colors were wonderfully pleasing as well.
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The music is very good too. The two standouts clearly are It’s a Hap-Hap-Happy Day and Faithful/Forever. The former is a wonderful kids song that is very catchy and fun in its beat while the latter is this gorgeously sung, operatic number that is sweetly romantic and deservedly nominated for an Oscar.
