Stars: Jack Back, Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris O’Dowd, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Catherine Tate, James Corden (Boxing Day) 87 mins.

★★

WITH Jack Black starring in this new version of Jonathan Swift’s classic story you don’t expect subtlety. And you don’t get it. This may disappoint those hoping for the satirical subtleties of the original. Whether the sight and sound of various British comedians overacting will be compensation I remain unsure.

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Black is Lemuel Gulliver, a lowly worker in the postroom of a New York newspaper, who has the hots for travel editor Darcy Silverman (Amanda Peet). Trying to impress her, he blags a travel assignment to the Bermuda Triangle which leads to him being shipwrecked in Lilliput where the people are very, very small which makes him very, very big.

The royals take a shine to him, not least because he pees on a palace fire to put out the flame. The royal wee, you might say. But remember children don’t try that at home, or definitely not in public.

Billy Connolly and Catherine Tate are the king and queen, with Emily Blunt as Princess Mary. She’s betrothed to General Edward (Chris O’- Dowd), who is generally nasty to everyone including his bride-to-be.

She much prefers commoner Horatio (Jason Segel, from Forgetting Sarah Marshall) but the law dictates that only someone who does something very heroic can ask for her hand. This is a scheme our own dear royal family might like to adopt as they can’t do worse than most marriages in recent history.

And so the story wanders around for a brief 87 minutes without any major excursions to any of the other lands mentioned in Swift’s book. Do I scent someone is after a franchise?

Black is well, Black. Like a badly behaved chubby schoolboy on a trip to a foreign land. If he’s supposed to be likeable, he fails.

The special effects are good (and it’s in 3D for those who like that sort of thing) and at least the film doesn’t outstay its welcome.