If anyone is misled into believing that the new Jack Black-starring film, Gulliver’s Travels, has anything to do with the Jonathan Swift classic (and I’ll admit, I was, as I try to stay away from trailers), I’ll let you know the movie has exactly three things in common with the 18^th century satire: 1) There is a character named Gulliver. 2) There is a boat. 3) There is a kingdom of little people.

Otherwise, the reference is in jest, a way to borrow what is a potent comic setup: big guy winds up in a world of little people.

Jack Black is the big guy, a fitting cast for a comedic actor whose exaggerated gait and sweeping mannerisms always feel larger than the body they come from: a squat, chubby man whose extroverted antics seemed tinted with the sub-surface frustrations that accompany a Napoleonic complex. The new film, a body-and-bro farce aimed squarely at the male, junior high demographic, is largely a referendum on Black’s appeal. If you like Black’s own pre-adolescent way with comedy, a happy-go-lucky ease that filters the world through cafeteria wisecracks, then you’ll make your way through this journey that uses Swift’s mini-men motif to tell a simple story about learning your true inner-size.

Black’s Gulliver is a mail room clerk at the fiction newspaper, The New York Daily Tribune. His a contented, if diminutive office gnome, who dutifully delivers letters and packages to the “better-than-hims” on the upper floors, before retreating to the confines of his subterranean office space to live glory through the video game Guitar Hero (with Black, pop music jokes and gags must follow). Gulliver has a crush on travel editor Darcy Silverman (Amanda Peet), and when his new mail room co-worker Dan (T.J. Miller) pushes Gulliver to ask her out, Gulliver buckles under pressure and inadvertently asks for a travel assignment instead. Darcy is surprisingly amenable to the idea, and after Gulliver provides her with plagiarized writing samples, the mail clerk is on his way to the Caribbean

Director Rob Letterman (Monsters vs. Aliens, Shark Tale) does well to keep these early scenes brief and succinct, and he isn’t bothered by implausibility or rough sketch storytelling. Moments after Gulliver is in his boat in the Bahamas, we see him swept up by a giant water funnel, whisking him into another world. Gulliver wakes on a beach, where he is tied down by an army of little men, led by General Edward (Chris O’Dowd). Gulliver is called “The Beast,” and he is imprisoned and enslaved, only to be eventually released when the giant Jack Black puts out a castle fire by urinating on it. The 10-year-olds in the audience squeal with laughter.

Antics like this follow, as Gulliver ingratiates himself to the local people by accomplishing various feats based on his size and inventing stories about his background to bolster his standing. This infuriates General Edward, who loses the general esteem of the people. Edwards revolts, Black defends the kingdom, the big man offers the princess love advice, Darcy somehow arrives on the island, and everyone must learn to be honest and believe in themselves. Roll credits.

Without Chris O’Dowd’s General Edward, Gulliver’s Travels would be a generally unbearable piece of corny, sentimental silliness. But the actor’s foppish antics and goofy word play (the world of the little people is hyper formal, and antiquated language jokes abound), inject some cleverness into the trek. Black, on the other hand, is content supporting his comic rouse with the usual hand pumps and air guitar. There are, of course, a couple of rousing renditions of classic rock standards, but this one-time Oliver Hardy of Gen-X malaise feels dangerously close to becoming a parody of himself.