Had the “pleasure” of seeing the new Robert Downey Jr. starring film Dolittle. This flick is being crucified by the professional reviewers and certainly not without cause. But I’m on the fence about it a bit. It’s certainly a bad movie but as far as kids movies go, you can do a whole lot worse.
So Dolittle is about the famous doctor who talks to animals. In this one, he’s become a recluse because his daring explorer wife has died at sea and now he hates all humans (for some reason). But wiggle your fingers enough to get a plot going, and he’s off on a high seas adventure with his animal friends to find a cure for the queen of England. I gather this adventure plot is more in line with the original books and the 1960s Dr. Dolittle movie than the Eddie Murphy films from the 90s.
So the first thing to know about this movie is that it’s annoying. It’s pervasively loud and obnoxious with noises and dialog… it never. shuts. up. It’s so cacophonous I started to get a low (very low) level headache just dealing with the noise. It doesn’t help that it’s roughly edited so there’s almost no down time or pauses for genuine emotion or dialog… not without an animal making a wisecrack or a random pratfall. As though the movie was at risk of telling a real story.
This might be tolerable if the jokes were funnier… though that’ll be a matter of taste. Most of the comedy didn’t land for me but, then again, I’m not a five year old. The humor mostly comes from off-the-cuff, random, and meme-able quips from the celebrity voice cast playing the animals. Did that ape just say “team work makes the dream work”? Did that parrot just quote Rush Hour? And is that ant (of all things) really playing the Godfather (“you come to me on my daughter’s wedding day”). But, hey, it’s that kind of movie – no sense worrying about it. Nobody is taking this nonsense seriously making it, so maybe why should the viewers?
Apparently the flick had a lot of reshoots and re-editing and it’s abundantly obvious when watching. The parrot acts as narrator and yada-yadas her way through a lot of the plot. For example, at one point they have to go do a pirate island and steal something… so the narrator just explains this quickly and suddenly the heroes have already broken into the castle. It’s like the movie just wants to skip to the good parts and cut out all the setup… which I guess is for the best since that gets the movie over quicker. On the other hand, it leaves other things unexplained. Like a dragonfly who appears out of nowhere to help them as if they skipped an introduction and backstory or a sugar glider who manages to fly and save the day… except it was never set up as a problem in the first place.
The movie is a mess and it’s loud and aggravating… but it’s mostly not boring and I think little kids will have fun (and hopefully they won’t ask questions about the extended dragon enema scene). And if you are dragged along, there are honestly far worse kids movies out there. This is a bad movie, but hardly the worst offender. It’s a weird non-recommendation from me since it’s not worth defending and it’s not good enough to bother. Might as well skip it.
Score: 66