REGENT THEATRE
Making cartoon-films is such an expensive and protracted business that no one can afford to make any full-length features in that way unless they are going to be good. That is one guarantee behind Paramount's new colour cartoon, “Gulliver’s Travels.” The other is the film itself, which already has been shown to packed houses at the Regent Theatre, where it was released this week. The “human” characters, Lemuel Gulliver, Princess Glory and Prince David, are amiable and pleasant enough, but it is comic pieces, real creations of the film artist, such as Gabby, the Town Crier, who give the greatest share of entertainment. The story is concerned with Lemuel Gulliver’s brief sojourn in the land of Lilliput, where the two local kings have j ust —almost—patched up a quarrel and sealed a treaty with the betrothal of their two children. King Bombo, the somewhat apoplectic visiting king, breaks up the party in a fit of pique and declares war on Lilliput. In the meantime, Gulliver is wrecked and washed ashore. This is where Gabby comes in—a genuine comic who is blustering, masterful add cowardly by turns, with engineering talents and a capacity for sudden vitriolic outbursts of speech which seem strangely topical. On his rounds Gabby calls “All’s Well” —even when, as otteu happens, he has just fallen waist-deep m a pond—but the sight of the tired Gulliver lying monstrously on the beach claps silence on his tongue, and drives him, like a comet, right back to town. All this part of the film is meet cleverly and amusingly conceived, as is the next stage, which shows the rousing of the town and the planning and carrying out of the major public wrork of binding Gulliver and dragging him into the city. The mechanical ingenuities and the comical' accidents involved in this vast project .provide some of the brightest sequences in the film, the twang of springs and the whine of ricochet bullets being used in most amusing contrast to the visual images on the screen. Gabby, in fact, is forever “twanging,” playing variations by going fiery red in the face, and then deathly white again. Three spies, with long, red noses, and mighty little brain, remain ostentatiously hidden from the other characters, butbeing in plain view of the audience — expose their absurdities to hearty laughter.
“Gulliver’s Travels” is a very diverting show, some parts of which will stick in the memories of children and of adults for many a long day. The colour is specially attractive, and is very easy on the eyes.
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Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 187, 4 May 1940, Page 16
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426REGENT THEATRE Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 187, 4 May 1940, Page 16
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