D+

Jonathan Swift’s name isn’t mentioned in the opening credits to this latest screen version of his satirical 1726 masterpiece, and that’s probably for the best. Apart from the notion of a character named Lemuel Gulliver visiting a land of people just inches tall who are constantly at war with a nearby land, it has little in common with its titular source. It’s more like “Land of the Lost,” if you’ll pardon the expression, and Swift is lucky not to be associated with such a travesty.

As the wretched “Land” was a vehicle for Will Ferrell, this one has been fashioned for Jack Black, and it’s just as much a mismatch. Black plays Gulliver, a mailroom delivery guy at a NYC newspaper who’s smitten with travel editor Darcy Silverman (Amanda Peet), as a typical slacker dude whose apartment is cluttered with the action figures that help fill the void in his life. But he’s a curiously subdued guy, with little of the manic quality that’s Black’s stock-in-trade. This Lemuel—and who could believe any parent would have given that name to a son?—is supposed to be a sweetly sympathetic schlub, something Black has a hard time pulling off.

In an effort to connect with Darcy, Gulliver secures a trial run as a travel writer, and is assigned to go down to the Bermuda triangle, where he’s promptly sucked into a storm that transports him to Lilliput. There he eventually becomes a hero in the war against Blefuscu, much to the displeasure of prissy, arrogant General Edward (Chris O’Dowd). He also acts as matchmaker between Princess Mary (Emily Blunt) and commoner Horatio (Jason Segel), though she’s betrothed to Edward. That leads the general to defect to Blefuscu and return in a gizmo that turns him into a giant clunking Transformer that sends Gulliver briefly to Brobdingnag, Swift’s land of giants (where he’s forced to wear a dress in a girl’s dollhouse) before returning not only to defeat Edward but to save Darcy, who’s wound up in Lilliput too, and win thereby her heart.

“Gulliver’s Travels” has some of the frat-boy humor you’d expect in a Jack Black movie—a wedgie, a butt-crack, a sequence in which Lemuel puts out a fire by relieving himself on building and occupants alike, including King Theodore (Billy Connolly)—the latter one of the few incidents from the book the screenwriters saw fit to retain. And it includes scads of pop culture references as parts of the ersatz autobiographical details with which Gulliver regales the Lilliputians. (Unsurprisingly, they’re all to Twentieth Century Fox properties—“Star Wars,” “Titanic,” “24.”) The Transformer business, moreover, is really out-of-place given that Lilliput, a pseudo-eighteenth century court, is supposed to be technologically primitive (and the attempt to explain the device away is nonsensical).

But the basic problem with the picture isn’t that it’s crude or offensive; it’s merely flaccid and bland. Though the effects are okay (though the 3D doesn’t add much) and the physical production is attractive (and nicely photographed by David Tattersall), the pacing is so deliberate, and Rob Letterman’s direction so lackadaisical, that it’s simply dull. The supporting cast doesn’t help matters. Segel’s so laid-back he’s practically anonymous, and both Blunt and Connolly are stuck in underwritten roles that give them nothing amusing to do or say. By contrast Peet comes on too strong, though she’s overshadowed by O’Dowd’s irritating Snidely Whiplash caricature. But T.J. Miller partially redeems his awful turn in “Yogi Bear” with a pleasantly low-key one as Gulliver’s new mailroom colleague.

Bad things often happen in threes, and that’s now the case with movie versions of classics this season. First came Konchalovsky’s dismal “Nutcracker,” and then Julie Taymor’s misbegotten “Tempest.” This movie completes a sad trilogy. In the spirit of Swift, here’s a modest proposal to filmmakers: stop cannibalizing these cherished works. Please.