Who is Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as the title character of Dolittle for, exactly? It’s a snuffling, shuffling, head-twitching collection of tics, with a physicality that’s more evocative of a nervous squirrel than the actual CGI squirrel who accompanies Dr. Dolittle on his adventures across the sea. Downey’s exaggerated jerks and fits in the film recall Johnny Depp’s turn as Jack Sparrow in the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, with one key difference: As annoying as Depp’s quirk-based acting style can be, it made sense for the captain of a pirate ship to be flamboyant. For a Victorian-era physician with a magical gift for understanding animal languages, the choice feels arbitrary. (Neither Rex Harrison nor Eddie Murphy played the character as if he’d been dosed with an obscure hallucinogen, after all.) It once again raises the question of why director Stephen Gaghan (Syriana) asked Downey to act that way—or perhaps, why he didn’t ask him to tone it down a little.
It’s not the only chaotic thing about Dolittle, a real food fight of a movie that’s ostensibly based on a book: Hugh Lofting’s The Voyages Of Doctor Dolittle (1922), the sprawling second novel in his series. As one might expect, however, the film goes off-book very quickly, so the literary influence here is minimal. What replaces it is a confused, sweaty, zigzag approach to storytelling, which waves away inconvenient details and waves in lame jokes with an equal sense of desperation. The basic premise is that Dolittle has withdrawn from human society after the loss of his beloved wife, Lily (Kasia Smutniak), an explorer who died at sea. He now spends his days surrounded by his animal friends, including a duck named Jab-Jab (Octavia Spencer); a gorilla named Chee-Chee (Rami Malek); a polar bear named Yoshi (John Cena); an ostrich named Plimpton (Kumail Nanjiani); and a parrot named Poly (Emma Thompson), the voice of reason and responsibility in this eccentric menagerie.
But there’s not much of a movie if Dr. Dolittle stays within the walls of his estate. And so the very Victorian combination of a child aristocrat (Lady Rose, played by Carmel Laniado) and a plucky boy in a newsie cap (Tommy Stubbins, played by Harry Collett) arrive at his doorstep in the first act, drawing Dolittle out of zoological retirement by invoking the also very Victorian value of loyalty to his monarch (Jessie Buckley), who’s been stricken with a mysterious illness and needs Dolittle’s help. (If you’re asking yourself at this point, “Isn’t Dr. Dolittle a veterinarian?” the answer is, sort of. He can treat humans, but he prefers not to.) And thus Dolittle, Lady Rose, Tommy, and the animals take off on a Pirates-style voyage across the sea for a magical fruit that will cure the queen of her malady. Along the way, they encounter magical creatures like Antonio Banderas and an irritable dragon with an impacted colon, who Dolittle cures by—how to put this delicately?—sticking his arm up her butt and pulling out a bagpipe.
That’s typical of the film’s humor, which reeks of after-the-fact punch-up prompted by negative test-audience feedback. That is to say, Dolittle is full of anachronistic pop culture references and poop and fart humor, jokes delivered in suspiciously low-impact style by the film’s animated animals. Occasionally, a bit pops up that’s specific to a particular species, like the scene where Dolittle escapes the jaws of a man-eating tiger by waving a mirror like a laser pointer. These are actually lightly amusing, as is Michael Sheen’s over-the-top performance as Dolittle’s sworn rival, the sputtering incarnation of medical mediocrity Dr. Blair Müdfly. The key there is that Sheen is not taking his role even remotely seriously, and is playing for the amusement of the children in the audience rather than operating by a misguided faith in the power of one-liners or a myopic conception of his movie-star brilliance. Would that everyone else involved in this production had the same clarity.
198 Comments
so closer to Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka in terms of baffling choices? Maybe now Brits know how we feel when every Brit or Aussie play Yanks all the time, what number mediocre accent is this for Downey? guy should do a little movie with Shane Black again.
When I saw the trailer for this I thought, “Remember when RDJ played Charlie Chaplin?”
And won an Oscar for it?
(Nominated, but not won).
Thanks for the correction!
It’s easy to get confused because RDJ, as Chaplin, gets an honorary Oscar in the movie. Which has me wondering: if a movie has a character getting an Oscar, is that actor then banned from getting an Oscar?
Maybe even self-fellating Hollywood finds that too on the nose.
You seem to think Dr. Dolittle is some sort of beloved British fictional folk hero, cherished by every British child since the cradle. Wrong, its just one of those weird almost forgotten works of literature which gets revived every thirty years or so and is them quickly forgotten again, and this pic is going to die as hard on it’s arse over here as it will everywhere else.
That’s reading into my comment a lot, I just think RDJ should stop with the bad british accents. Do you agree on that?
Absolutely, some of his early scenes in Chaplin made me cringe…
I enjoyed the book as a kid. There’s a pleasant weirdness to it. But no mention of the Pushmi-pullyu in this review… that’s basically the best bit and has me worried this film might not be as stellar as everyone’s saying!!!
I small a Golden Raspberry for someone.
I mean, just from the preview, it looks like he’s just playing his Sherlock Holmes character.
I wish he’d mackle less!
I have a simple rule: I see a trailer with a song as awful as whatever that version of “What a Wonderful World” is, I don’t watch the movie.
Yeah, that was probably the single most bafflingly bombastic and self-serious trailer I’ve ever seen for a family adventure-comedy.
The fact that there’s a single poop joke in a movie with that trailer is the reason this is a January release.
I can deal with poop jokes if they’re funny. The fact that a dragon would have digestive problems after eating a Scotsman playing bagpipes (a favor to the world) makes sense. Where these movies lose me is the contemporary pop culture references, which are usually dated by the release.
Anachronistic references and turns of phrase are never as funny as funny and scriptwriters think they are.
God knows what happened with that sentence.
So true. The music started in the theater and I was like, “Oh my, this must be a cross between Ben-Hur and Empire Strikes Back. Wuh? Dr. Doolittle!?!?!”
Finding out its from the same director as Syriana explains a lot.
I laughed pretty hard when I saw that.
What a Wonderful World has been used to convey bitter irony in movies so often that now I simply hear it as a sad, depressing song.
I wanted to take my 4-year-old to this when it was announced but the trailer made it feel like a holocaust movie.
It was just a stunningly awful trailer that manages to hit all of the late 2010s trailer cliches. Playing a maudlin version of a famously upbeat song over everything? Check. Veering wildly between slapstick and sentimental pap? Check. Cutting to black immediately after the protagonist is introduced, as if to say “yes, the Dr. Dolittle is in this movie, we get it if you need to take a moment to come to terms with that.” Check. Nauseatingly editing together a bunch of three second clips that lack any sort of visual or narrative coherency? Check check check. I love the lingering shot where Downey ostentatiously puts on a top hat, as if Dr Dolittle+top hat is an instantly recognizable and iconic combo that will put a shiver down everyone’s spines. He’s not fucking Batman, dudes.
It was a BWAAAMP away from perfection.
From the producer of Alice in Wonderland* click *
“Dr Dolittle? In my Dolittle film? It’s more likely than you think.”
*record scratch sound effect*
I’d see this movie it involved Robert Downey Jr. fucking Batman.
Okay, but which Batman? West? Keaton? Clooney? Bale? Affleck? Patterson? Conroy? Batmanuel?Because I’d watch about one or two of those.
Holy shit this was a good comment.The hat flip thing was shown not once, but twice in other versions of the trailer.Almost makes you miss the “In a World…” era.
Morbius trailer had a slow Fur Elise and it looks like shit, so yeah, it’s a pretty good metric.
I’m just impressed that they didn’t go for a slow minor key piano cover of “Are You That Somebody?”.
Honestly? That’s a pretty good rule to live by…
Why oh why does Hollywood love these shitty covers? I get that they are cheaper than the original, but how about going into any music school in the nation to find people who can actually sing.
Problem is, countless movie trailers have some melodramatic cover of a beloved song first made popular when FDR was president.
I need clarification. Do dragons have (like cows) a rumen,a reticulum, an omasum (or manyplies as you guys may be more familiar) and an abomasum or true stomach? Was the bagpipe stuck in the large colon of the dragon because she ate a Scott playing his bagpipe……….and frankly, who would blame her?And what is this I hear about Downey going down on a squirrel, because that’s just nuts.
Secondary point of clarification: Does “they encounter magical creatures like Antonio Banderas” mean that 1. the magical creature is voiced by Antonio Banderas, 2. the magical creature is a separate entity that is not dissimilar to Antonio Banderas in terms of magical charm and good looks, or 3. Antonio Banderas is playing himself as a magical creature? Possible 4. Antonio Banderas has been a magical creature the whole time and this is him finally admitting it.
I am going to go with yes.
Well, if you look at the cast listing up top, you’ll see Antonio Banderas listed twice. So obviously it’s an Antonio Banderas being voiced by Antonio Banderas.
Well-spotted, clearly I was not paying attention.
It’s the role he was born to play!
Oh, like in Shrek
The real magic was friendship (with Antonia Banderas).
The real friends were the magic we made along the way (with Antonio Banderas).
A little bit of A and a little bit of B and that’s why he’s credited twice in the beginning of this review. Because this film ends when it turns out that it’s all a weird fever dream that Antonio Banderas had during the filming of Ecks Vs Sever and that’s why Sherlock shows up. Because who plays Conifer Ecks in that film? That’s right Joan Watson herself Lucy Liu.(I don’t know what Ecks Vs Sever is but I assume it’s a family drama in the style of Kramer Vs Kramer?)
He is Puss. . . . In Boots!
4
It’s Antonio Bandersnatch!
Uh … the second one.
Since dragons are fantasy creatures and don’t really exist, I suppose they can have whatever biological features you want them to have.
She did eat a Scott. It was Scott Walker, during the twenty minute bagpipe solo during one of his gigs.
It seems unlikely, as dragons are traditionally portrayed as carnivores, and only some herbivores have the four stomachsset up. Dragons are more likely to have a digestive system roughly similar to other large carnivorous reptiles, such as komodo dragons.
Fuck you, bagpipes are awesome.
“…and an irritable dragon with an impacted colon, who Dolittle cures by—how to put this delicately?—sticking his arm up her butt and pulling out a bagpipe.”Ticket for one please!
Ace Ventura: The Victorian Era
So he’s playing it literally the same as he did Sherlock Holmes? I guess that’s what he thinks everyone in Victorian times was like.And who knows, he might be sort of right. The Victorians did put cocaine in a lot of beverages (although any jitteryness would have been mostly balanced out by all the opium).
Hasn’t RDJ been acting like himself in most of his roles? I recently rewatched “Chances Are” and, yes, that’s still RDJ doing RDJ.
Denzel is maybe the only star who did something really different with Training Day. Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, RDJ, etc are all kinda playing themselves almost. It’s pretty common.
A lot of A-list actors have have personal script-doctors to ensure that the actor’s characters reflect their brand, regardless of the role. It’s why Will Smith has basically played The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in different guises for 30 years.
makes sense, that must be some NDA as no one really comes out to discuss that work. it def. sounds reasonable but honestly Al Pacino or Bruce Willis probably just show up and act how they act…and they take roles with directors who let them do their thing. Leo kinda dissapears into a role but some of this is really just how big the star is, skewing our perception. Tom Hardy has mad range but it’s hard not to see anyone but Tom Hardy. Besides Warrior i think i see him the same on Peaky Blinders or The Drop. Interesting topic, i wonder how real actors feel about it
Yes.
Downey’s position as a Giant Movie Star is odd at this point, because it’s about 95% based on having played Tony Stark, 4% Sherlock Holmes, and 1% the vague memories of his career before that. He’s a brilliant actor (when he’s not doing bizarre shit like Dr. Dolittle) but is he really a leading man type? I think we’d get a lot more use out of him if he stuck to solid character roles in smaller films.
Loved him in Zodiac. “Hey ‘Bullitt’! You gonna catch this fuckin’ guy or what?!”
Yeah, he’s pretty fantastic in Zodiac, but it’s just a spectacular film all around. A few months ago, we rewatched Less Than Zero, wow, he’s just terrific, though that was pre “I finally got my shit together” Downey, so it was a bit of a “channeling” performance.We’ve been meaning to rewatch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, also very recommended, another case of the dude can act, but money/post-MCU-stress-disorder/he-gives-no-f***s, seem to have kicked in.See Chris Evans in Knives Out, for how to handle PMCUSD …
Thanks for the link to the IMDB page of this Chris Evans person. Never heard of him.
Hahaha, that’s some kind of auto-name-parsing-link-to-IMDB black magic going on with Kinja (or at least the AVC’s implementation).
Less Than Zero was peak brat pack. The book Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis is both nihilistic and aimless. A fun beach read!
Hahaha, yes, Less Than Zero at the beach, American Psycho back up at the pool 😀
“You guys gotta kill Stark, man; I’m sick and tired of playing this guy year after year. I’m done with the dopey costumes and talking to a guy covered in ping-pong balls who’s eventually going to be eight feet tall and covered in fur! My career’s gotta move on! Hang on, my agent’s calling…uh-huh…an hour and a half of me as a Victorian-era doctor talking to animals? Oh, CGI animals? Absolutely. This sounds like the role of a lifetime. Let’s not even negotiate fees, just tell them I’m fully committed to this thing.”
I know you’re just being glib, BUT I still feel the need to just toss in a small bit of defense for RDJ, which is that he seemingly enjoyed playing Stark (or at the least loved those mega-sized paychecks), and was actually a bit resistant to the idea of being killed off and had to be sold on it by the Russos.
I bet “you get the longest, most bombastic outro title card in the end credits.”That shit felt like it was introducing the fucking pope.
100% this. Thought the same thing the minute I saw this trailer…..baffled
Actually the evidence is that he is reluctant to part with the Stark role. This reeks of someone dumping a barrel full of money on his doorstep, just as his Marvel contract was reaching its end. I agree he needs a good prestige role more than he needs another franchise.
At the risk of entirely missing the point of this comment: What MCU character is eight feet tall and covered in fur?
How dare you besmirch the good name of Due Date
Dude Ate
That would be the porn parody.
What are you, a girl or something?
He’s known as a “serious” actor but I honestly can’t think of any role he played better than Tony Stark. He made him feel real in a way that he rarely does when he’s playing normal people.
As weird as it is to say, I think he did that pretty well in Tropic Thunder.
Chaplin.
He also did a couple of reasonably successful Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmeses that were quickly edged out of the zeitgeist by the Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes.
I thought those were pretty fun, if (as you note) forgettable.
I liked them a lot, particularly the Zimmer score, which Cumberbatch Sherlock clearly ripped off.
Ritchie’s first Sherlock Holmes was kinda fun. Most of the people I know who have read the books say Downey was surprisingly faithful to the character.The sequel, Game of Shadows, was completely pointless and forgettable. A third is on the way for late next year.
reasonably successful movies i didn’t remember until this very moment you say!? i’d say an apology is in order because i don’t know how we could have overlooked those cinematic works of cinema length cinema format cinema.
Those two movies made something like a billion dollars combined so more than reasonably successful.
In my pantheon he is 50% known for playing Kirk Lazarus.
Tropic Thunder is still hilarious
It was interesting to see him in ‘Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang’, because it was the first big thing he was in after recovering from his addiction issues, and there was a lot of doubt that he could actually be a reliable bet for a studio. And then he put in a great performance where he wasn’t the coolest person on screen, and suddenly he was on fire again. When he got the role of Tony Stark, he made it his own in a way I think few other actors could have, and without that I doubt we’d have the MCU. Now, though, it looks like he’s going down the same route as Chris Pratt, being the generic leading man who’ll plug more or less the same performance into any tentpole picture that comes along. It’s not the trajectory I would have hoped for him, but at the same time, I can’t blame him for getting a very comfortable living out of it.
KKBB was fantastic. Downey needs to lean into roles that involve rapid-fire patter and snarky witticisms. I want a sequel to The Good Guys where Crowe and Gosling interact with Downey.
Sometimes I rewatch KKBB wondering if maybe it’s aged badly. And some parts of it have, a little. But Downey and Kilmer snapping patter at each other sure as shit hasn’t. I actually think RDJ could do a great, if unconventional, Phillip Marlowe if you wanted to adapt some of Raymond Chandler’s novels. (My pick would probably be ‘The Lady in the Lake’ or Farewell, My Lovely’.) I think he’s at his best when he plays someone the odds are against, and he could nail that beautiful Noir dialogue.
On that same track, he’d be great as Nick Charles in a Thin Man revival.
Downey and Kilmer snapping patter at each other– I got 5 bucks says you could still get him.– Really? That’s funny. I got a 10 says, “Pass the pepper.” I got two quarters singing harmony on “Moonlight in Vermont.”– What?
– Talking money.– A talking monkey?
– Talking monkey, yeah, yeah. Came here from the future. Ugly sucker. Only says, “Ficus.”
I love that exchange. There’s something about the way Kilmer says “Ficus” in particular that always gets me.
“When he got the role of Tony Stark, he made it his own in a way I think few other actors could have, and without that I doubt we’d have the MCU.”
So what you’re saying is that we need to devise a time machine, go back to before IRON MAN came out, and make sure Robert Downey Jr. has a very serious accident. One that’ll take him out of the acting game. Permanently.
The Judge with Robert Duvall was pretty good. He also did Tropic Thunder. And of course, the fantastic Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. He’ll be fine if he can find the right projects. Doolittle ain’t it.
Robert Downey Jr. was incredible in Chaplin, Zodiac, Iron Man, & Sherlock Holmes, but I hate nearly everything else he’s ever been in. He just doesn’t care anymore.
He played a good Asshole Movie Exec in Bowfinger
He’s fallen into the Depp trap.
No love here for Too Much Sun?
You hate Tropic Thunder?
Oh, I love Tropic Thunder! I always forget it exists.
I love him in Tropic Thunder, but that’s more of a supporting role than lead.
Everyone’s amazing in Tropic Thunder, including MTV Movie Award Best Kiss winner Tobey Maguire.
He was great in Charlie Bartlett. Probably my favourite non-Tony Stark role of his….you may have a point.
Between the wardrobe, the hair, and the physical tics it feels like RDJ is playing Dr. Doolittle as the Victorian Cosmo Kramer.
G-g-giddyup!
Pigman, Jerry, pigman!
Now that you mention it, a veterinarian who could talk to his roosters — find out where they’re hurting and, more importantly, tell them the best way to make the other birds hurt — would make a great cockfighter.
It would be a slow motion cockfight with the moves called out, natch.
As in this, around the 40 secs mark?
Yes, although I was thinking of something less Matrix-y.
Starring Warren Oates.
Does he treat donkeys? Because that would make him The Assman.
It was one in a million, doc!
Had he not committed career suicide, Michael Richards could actually have been great in this kind of role.
First thing I thought of when I saw him in the trailer. Hey, Kosmo!
well, best of luck. it would kind of suck for Bobby’s first post-Avengers movie to not do well at the theaters.
So, does Antonio Banderas play 2 roles in this movie? Or are there 2 Antonios Banderas?
This movie looks like a hot mess. Additionally, I have yet to see a good movie that incorporated this level of CGI animals.
I think the problem also is they also keep casting high-profile or easily recognizable actors in these roles. It really doesn’t work aside from maybe Timon and Pumbaa in the new Lion King.
So now not only do you have to actively try to trick your mind that, yes, that ostrich is talking.. I also have to convince myself it’s not Dinesh from Silicon Valley.
The Jungle Book was surprisingly solid.
I saw the trailer for this and The Call of the Wild back-to-back and instantly developed an intense hatred for CGI critters.
I’m always glad Michael Sheen is getting paid
I’m glad that RDJ is now just two more flops away from coming back to the MCU
lol. RDJ has got so much MCU money at this point, he could buy Montenegro.
But he’s saving up for Jamaica
Maybe he’s saving up for Luxembourg
How could anyone with enough money to buy Montenegro not buy Montenegro.
In that case I hope this makes a billion dollars. Unless he comes back to the mcu with his ego bruised enough he puts in a little bit of effort.
Hmmm not sure what MCU you watched but RDJ seemed to put in some effort in those films. Many would say that without him as Iron Man there would have never been an MCU.
Yeah he was great in the first few movies, credit where credits due, but anyone can see by the last few he was phoning it in massively, most of his screen presence is just his head pasted on a cgi body, and by endgame he’s barely out of his pyjamas.
I thought he was pretty good through out but to each their own
That’s totally fair. Sorry if I came across rude earlier. He’s definitely never bad
Or two more flops until a massive relapse in his addictions.Which could in turn give him a redemption path back to the MCU.
Marvel can rehire him when he hits rock bottom to do an R rated alternate Universe Iron Man story based on The Demon in the Bottle storyline. First comic book movie to win an Oscar I bet!!!
1) I’m already queuing up to buy tickets2) I think Joker is going to take allll of the Oscars this year anyway
I recently rewatched 30 rock and was blown away by how hilarious Sheen is in that.“Wait, your name is Wesley Snipes?”“No, no! Look at him and look at me, who do you think should have the name Wesley Snipes! I guarantee you it’s always the pale Englishman. Frankly you should be having this conversation with him” “whatever, I’m going”“I’ll see you in two months! For sweeps! That’s what we call spring cleaning in England!”
make way for foot cycle! make way for foot cycle!
“I can’t go back to England. I’ll have to witness the London Olympics. We’re not prepared! Did you see the Beijing opening ceremony? We don’t have control over our people like that”
“No one calls it that!”“Alright, velocipede!”
“You’ll be back. There’s only one Wesley Snipes in this world!”“You know that’s not true.”
I always think about that story that came out about him punching Jeremy Northam in the face because he yelled at Kate Beckinsale for forgetting her lines.
Oh cool I had no idea!
I’m yet to see a bad Michael Sheen performance. Dude always brings it.
Ah, you haven’t been watching The Good Fight?
I hated the character he played, but I still appreciated the performance. It’s not at all based in any kind of reality, but he commits to it.
I’m embarrassed to admit I had never really paid attention to Michael Sheen until he held his own with (and occasionally outshone) David Tennant in Good Omens.
All due respect to Tennant, but Sheen is a brilliant actor. Dramas? Check. Comedy? Check. Dumb action movies? Check. Michael sheen deserves huge credit for being a rare actor to appear in garbage like underworld, twilight or dolittle and escape with his dignity intact. It makes me happy that several extremely negative dolittle reviews still praise Sheen. I highly recommend his trilogy of Tony Blair movies to get a great vibe of how wonderful Sheen is with great material.
The D*mned United. Watch it. Not sure if I had to asterisk the D word or not but didn’t want to deal with it after the fact in case I did.
Check out “The Damned United”. Michael Sheen plays this great British soccer coach who left one team to coach its bitter rival and it all goes crossways. Based on a true story. It’s kind of like if the Yankees manager would quit to coach the Boston Red Sox. He’s really good in it.
I saw this trailer and wondered why Disney was making an inferior copy of the first Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, complete with the nervous magical veterinarian main character and steampunk look. When that movie was mediocre at best.
This is a Universal joint, not Disney.
Same question though. Like, the mannerisms and look of the movie are so close to Fantastic Beasts. It’s a weird movie to copy.
I find it odd that he chose to do this movie at all. He could have done virtually any movie, taken any role out there and he chose…Dr Dolittle?
Maybe he wanted a low-stakes role that wouldn’t be taken seriously, as opposed to, for example, trying to get his Daniel Day Lewis/Adam Driver on in his first outing after Iron Man and potentially bombing. It’s a very curious choice regardless of the reasoning, though.
i suspect either ‘favorite book/movie’ from downey’s childhood or current favorite from a younger relative
That would make sense.
Also, $20 million
Let’s just say it moved him … TO A BIGGER HOUSE!
He is worth about 300 million. Pretty sure he wasn’t struggling to afford an upgrade.
Yeah, because we need more movies where people talk to animals instead of, well, each other.
Everyone seems to be ragging on the choice, but it seems pretty clear cut that he just wanted a project he would find fun. And what’s more fun than a director that’ll basically let you do what you want? I mean he just decided trying a Welsh accent would be a good time, and they said “sure, ok.” Sounds like a good time, right? Plus he’s at that age where a lot of actors want to do stuff that their youngest kids and grandkids will watch. It makes total sense that this was a project he did for the joy of it, moreso than for the chance to make money or win an Oscar.
Stop trying to make non-animated Dolittle adaptations. Animals talking to/interacting with humans works in cartoons because you can give them human emotions and expressions without tumbling head first into the uncanny valley. Animals talking to/interacting with humans in the real world, either via puppetry or CGI, is fucking creepy and off-putting. It was off-putting in 1967, it was off-putting in 1998, and—surprise surprise—it’s off-putting in 2020.
But by about 2040, when the various toxic substances we’ve released into the environment will have produced real talking animals, we’ll just be able to cast them from life and it’ll just be creepy in a different way.
Stop making Dolittle adaptions.
Nothing I hate more than movie makers who think they’re smarter than their original literary source material. Instead of giving us a better story they tend to replace the original with focus-grouped ‘Hollywood writer’ BS. I still remember the movie ‘Troy’ from 2004 that rewrote ‘the Illiad’(the cornerstone of western literature) and made it just plain awful Hollywood cheese.
Every time I watched Troy (theater, HBO, whatever) I always thought, “I should like this, so why does my brain hate it?”
See also: pretty much every movie based on a video game.
Kirk Lazarus wouldn’t have touched the Dr. Doolittle role with a 10 foot pole!
So is the Pushme-Pullyou in this or not?
This book series and (appropriately enough) the 1967 movie were pretty freaky. Every subsequent iteration has dampened said freakiness.
I had a Dr. Dolittle kiddie picture book where the doc was captured by cannibal savages (yes, I know now it was racist as hell) who agreed not to eat him if he captured and brought them a live pushme-pullyou. Then the pushme-pullyou agreed to sail back to London with the doc and just hang out, I guess. I imagine the doc had to feed him twice as much, but, hey, no mess!
Literally precisely the grade we were all expecting.
I was kind of hoping for a D, myself.
Yes, but you were *expecting* a C-. Admit it.
Who made this, and why do the animals in Victorian England all have American accents?
I guess, being animals, they don’t have to adhere to the accents of their local area. Maybe they have “animal” accents that coincidentally sound very American.
British accents actually sounded more like the modern American accent than the “standard” British accent. The high class people started really dropping their Rs and all the other accoutrements of RP later, and since people want to be high class, it spread from there.
Animals, however, give no shits, and could have kept their original accents.
Is Downey Jr transitioning into some sorta’ Johnny Depp style paycheck-grab-for-making-blah-movies, now that he’s a big bankable star? Hope not.
Say what you want, the bit where he says “I am Dolittle” and snaps Michael Sheen out of existence gave me chills.
The top picture makes RDJ look like the result of a transporter accident involving Timothy Hutton and Tom Cavanagh.
Now that you say that, I want Downey and Cavanagh in the same movie.
Granted, I’m basing this entirely off the lone trailer I saw, but it seems like Robert Downey Jr. is just doing a variation of his Sherlock Holmes.Which, you know, fine. Whatever. I actually liked his two outings as Holmes quite a bit and am weirdly looking forward to the third.This looks like something I’d watch when I’m sick enough that all I can really do is lay in bed and drool. Which happens maybe once every year or two depending on how badly I’m treating myself.
I’m sorry you had to write this.
You know how they have stunt casting? Having the guy who helmed Syriana direct Doolittle is that, but for directors. That’s probably why the movie is whackadilly.
I didn’t know the guy who did Syriana, the underrated Gold, and wrote Traffic directed this. Yikes. Hopefully it was a “one for the studio, one for me.” deal.
I just can’t get past that weird accent he’s trying. Honestly, couldn’t they find a good British actor to play this part? I mean, Michael Caine would have been better, even at his age. Ralph Fiennes? The ghost of Sir Alec Guiness?
I’m very disappointed. The poster had me expecting RDJ to be playing Cosmo Kramer, possibly to a soundtrack by the Pixies.
I just … I mentioned in another comment section that the 1967 Rex Harrison Doctor Dolittle was a cherished childhood memory for me. I really like RDJ, but this movie just seems so unnecessarily *bigger, brighter, louder!* that I don’t want to see it.
I liked it better when Robert Downey Jr. only talked to raccoons.
This movie and its story are good