Dolittle

Dolittle

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Harry Collett

Directed by Stephan Gaghan

I guess if you left one of the highest grossing movies of all time with $75 million dollars, you too would be able to do something completely out of left field and not give a care about it.  Such is the case with Robert Downey Jr., whose own company produced the latest in the long-running franchise that is Dr. Dolittle, based off Hugh Lofting's children's books from the 1920s - a character that's been seen on screen, stage, and every other form of media for the last few decades.  The story of an eccentric doctor who can communicate with animals should be something of whimsy and wonder, but the only wonder here is bewilderment as to how this film ever saw the light of day - a film so confusing, so lackluster, and so downright nutty, you'd be forgiven to think this was some sort of spoof, or maybe some college student's senior project.  But instead it's a major big-budget film featuring a venerable "who's who" of current stars that somehow fell apart right from the start and kept falling as the story progressed, resulting in something not even children can enjoy.

Dr. John Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr.) and his wife have been able to help mend animals, since Dolittle can communicate with them.  He's even been invited to help the Queen's (Jessie Buckley) animals as well, but when his wife dies, Dolittle becomes a recluse in his home, staying away from other humans and only relying on his animals for company, including his macaw Polynesia (Emma Thompson), gorilla Chee-Chee (Rami Malek), polar bear Yoshi (John Cena), ostrich Plimpton (Kumail Nanjiani), duck Dab-Dab (Octavia Spencer), and loyal dog Jip (Tom Holland).  One day fellow animal lover Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett) arrives with an injured squirrel, just as Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado) also arrives with news that the Queen is dying, and requires Dolittle's assistance.  At first wary of helping, Dolittle is convinced when he hears that if the Queen dies, then he'll loose his home and his animals will be left out in the wild during hunting season, so he embarks on a quest to a fantastical island housing the only herb that can save the Queen's life.

There's so many negative things to say about this film, but very little to the good.  The jokes pretty much all fell flat, and relied almost solely on low-brow fart jokes (with an ending that's already been talked about, but trust me it's even worse seeing it on screen).  The CGI looks about ten years outdated.  The editing is rushed and choppy, like someone edited it on some cheap computer software that kept certain scenes for a quick second like they had planned on cutting it entirely but somehow left a sliver behind on accident.  The voices had a strange quality to them, making you discombobulated as you don't really know who's talking and when, even when it's an actual human on screen.  Robert Downey Jr.'s accent was atrocious, and was almost unintelligible during several scenes of the film.  The entire story made no sense, as if it wasn't easy enough to discover the reason of the Queen's ailment, but no one seemed to care until the end.  The journey itself was uninspired and insipid, bland and predictable all the way through.

The good things I can say about "Dolittle" is...actually...I got nothing good to say about it.  It's just a mess from start to finish, and that's after three weeks of frantic reshoots and editing after poor test audience performances.  So I guess it could've actually been worse than it was - but I still find that hard to believe.

From start to finish, "Dolittle" had little to do with being decent and a lot to do with being a huge, unmitigated mess that should've either been shelved entirely or pushed years later in order to produce something at least resembling decent.

The Score: D-