When I was a kid and I visited my grandma’s house, she had a lot of older hardback books from when her kids, including my mom, were younger. I’d try to read them sometimes, and I do remember a few Doctor Dolittle books. I picked one at random and didn’t get far because it A) was not the first book and was written as such, and B) seemed to mostly involve Dr. Dolittle coming home on the back of a giant snail. It…didn’t do anything for me. At any rate, we have another adaptation of author Hugh Lofting’s children’s lit series.
Granted, the reviews came in saying it was awful, but I like to see a trainwreck once in a while to remind myself what a bad movie really looks like. Besides, I might end up liking it!
OK, to be honest, I didn’t like it. But likewise, I didn’t hate it. It’s not a well-made movie, but it’s hardly the worst I’ve ever seen. But man, does it have problems.
The movie opens with a little exposition provided by Poly the parrot (voice of Emma Thompson). In an actually well-produced animated short, we learn Dr. John Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr) could talk to the animals. Gaining renown far and wide–or at least across England–Dolittle even gets to help the Queen. Granted an estate of his own for all animals everywhere, Dolittle eventually marries an adventurous explorer named Lily, and the two would go on adventures together until one day she left for somewhere without him and never came back. Cut ahead to live action and it’s a few years later and Dolittle has shut himself off from the outside world.
Then some things happen. A boy named Stubbins (Harry Collett) comes by with an injured squirrel (voice of Craig Robinson), and a young girl named Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado) comes by demanding Dolittle treat the Queen, who herself is very sick. Dolittle goes, but only because his estate is only his until the Queen’s death, and that leads to an assassination attempt and a journey where Dolittle, his new apprentice Stubbins, and a bevy of animals only Dolittle can understand head off to find a rare fruit no one has even seen before.
Now, at no point in the movie did I feel like the people making it weren’t trying. I think everyone here really is trying to make a good, family-friendly movie. Downey, though speaking in a weird accent, seems to be shooting for a sentimental and sweet movie as his character gradually comes out of his self-imposed exile, bonding with Stubbins and providing medical care–in some cases, psychiatric–to anyone he meets who needs it. His Dolittle is a gentle, if damaged, man.
Likewise, Michael Sheen (as the movie’s human villain, a jealous rival doctor) and Antonio Banderas (as Dolittle’s angry pirate father-in-law) provide good performances. There’s a lot of pacing issues, and the script seems to act as if we will automatically care about these people simply because they are in the movie, but the acting isn’t bad.
The real issue with Dolittle, besides the pacing going by far too quickly in many places, is the animals themselves. Voiced by an all-star cast of famous folks, the animals are often done in decent CGI form, but they seem to be in a completely different movie. True, Chee-Chee the gorilla (voiced by Rami Malek), a cowardly ape afraid of everything, has something of a story arc, but the others? Not really, but neither does any other character aside from maybe Dolittle. So, here we are with the likes of perpetually chilly polar bear Yoshi (John Cena), neurotic ostrich Plimpton (Kumail Nanjiani), and a duck named Dab-Dab (Octavia Spencer) who thinks vegetables are surgical instruments, among others, making dated pop culture references and other similar such humor, and much of what these animals say and do seems like it came out of a completely different movie, none of which is all that funny.
These competing tones and the rushed pace, complete with all those tired and unfunny jokes, leads to a movie that just doesn’t work. It’s just a forgettable flick in the grand scheme of things. Maybe kids would dig it, and I sure didn’t hate it, but I’m in no rush to ever see it again.
Maybe I should actually try reading one of Hugh Lofting’s books instead.
Grade: D
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