Dolittle Review
PG: Some action, rude humor and brief languageRuntime: 1 Hr and 46 MinutesProduction Companies: Media Rights Capital, Team Downey, Roth FilmsDistributor: Universal PicturesDirector: Stephen GaghanWriters: Stephen Gaghan, Dan Gregor, Doug MandCast: Robert Downey Jr., Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Harry Collett, Jessie Buckley, Jim Broadbent,Voice Cast: Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, John Cena, Kumail Nanjiani, Octavia Spencer, Tom Holland, Craig Robinson, Ralph Fiennes, Selena Gomez, Marion CotillardRelease Date: January 10, 2020Wow, I’m just absolutely dumbfounded. Robert Downey Jr. has dedicated a decade of his career to portraying Tony Stark for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He’s done other projects in between, such as Tropic Thunder, Due Date, and two of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies as the titular character. But, as we all know, he was exclusively the MCU’s Tony Stark. Now, we’re left with the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame where Tony Stark sacrificed his life to save the world. Say what you will about Endgame, but that was such a powerful moment that made audiences worldwide cry their asses off. With that being the glorious conclusion to RDJ’s relationship with Marvel, we were curious as to what his first post-Tony Stark role would be. For some reason that role was Dr. Dolittle and uhhhh… this is ain’t it, chief. This is far from it. Like, the complete opposite end of the spectrum for it.
Damn. I would’ve preferred another entry to the contemporary Eddie Murphy Dr. Dolittle franchise. A reboot, even. If we’re using Eddie Murphy comparisons, let’s just say that, as far as impact goes, this is RDJ’s Norbit after he had just delivered a Dreamgirls-caliber performance. If you understand, you understand.
The eccentric and world renowned Dr. John Dolittle lives reclusively amongst his family of animals at his estate after mourning the loss of his wife. That is until a young boy trespasses upon his property and asks to save a squirrel he inadvertently shot. At the same time, he’s requested by the Queen’s lady to embark on a quest to retrieve a magic antidote after Her Majesty falls gravely ill.
If there was one person who managed to put a smile on my face throughout this damn mess was Michael Sheen. He portrays the main antagonist, Mudfly, Dolittle’s enemy who was always envious of his prosperity. He takes nothing but joy out of witnessing his downfall and hates him to an obsessive degree. Sheen plays this in such a joyous, upbeat, over the top manner that had me chuckling more than I thought I would. He’s the only human actor who is actually given direction and makes the most out of his presence.
As far as the abundant amount of CG animals go, the voice performances are all pretty decent. Compared to something like, say, The Lion King 19’ where the majority of the voice cast felt like they were delivering their lines without any life whatsoever, I felt myself enamored by a lot of the vocal performances. You can tell the actors were having fun in the recording room while bringing life to the scene. I found myself emotionally gravitating towards Rami Malik as the anxiety-riddled and easily frightened gorilla, Chee-Chee. He would fearfully scurry away when the going got tough and it was cute. Malik delivered his voice performance with tenderness. I face anxiety everyday and am easily frightened by the bare minimum, but yeah, that gorilla was cool. Then, there’s this rushed arc between John Cena’s bashlyk-wearing bro-dude polar bear character named Yoshi and a neurotic Ostrich named Plimpton who share fun and moderately amusing sequences of banter. They quickly wore out their welcome, but I found myself chuckling at their bickering every now and then.
Shortly after the first trailer was released there came a Reddit thread courtesy of a VFX artist who worked on the film and he spilled some amazing tea on how much of a mess production was. There were various issues, such as the director being absent during pre-production, abundant miscommunication, scenes being filmed without knowing where the animated animals would be shot, etc. Fuck it, here’s the link to the series screenshots of the thread ICYMI.
Initially, the thread came across as questionable to me because it’s Reddit. Nothing can be taken at face value. I even read the thread one last time before checking to see if anything was inaccurate. HOLY SHIT! I am sold that all the mentioned stories about the messy production were 100% correct, which really begs the question? Why the hell did Universal hire Stephen Gaghan to helm this?!Who was the dumbass that thought hiring the guy who directed movies such as Syriana, Havoc, and Gold should helm a near $200 million family film? Was he commissioned? Was Gore Verbinski just like, “Nah, those swashbuckling action family pictures are behind me”? You couldn’t hire him or anyone with the required experience or caliber? Who thought it was a good idea for Stephen Gaghan to helm this movie? This is clearly not in his realm of expertise and the film is evidence of it all the way through. From the very beginning, as the audience is introduced to Dolittle, all of the complaints come to light as the shot composition begins this lazy routine where each shot of RDJ would just be a closeup of his face as he’s projecting a variation of Johnny Depp-like quirky spasms and tics with nothing in the background. The next shot would be a closeup/POV shot of the animal he’s interacting with and that would be the running cycle. Barely do you get a wide shot of Dolittle in his quarters with the animals in the room, and when you do, they’re inconsistent. This is the shot composition of a typical scene: closeup of animal —> closeup of another animal —> reactionary closeup shot of a human in the area —> closeup of animal —> closeup of animal —> closeup of Dolittle —> closeup of animal who wasn’t even in the scene to begin with.
Imagine that on a loop for the entire movie. The direction is completely lazy and misguided that it fails on the basic front of making audiences believe that Dolittle is even occupying the same space as the animals he’s interacting with. Only a whopping 30% of the shots are comprised of Dolittle and the animals in the same frame. This is 2020 and for a $175 million film, you’d expect some sort of consistency. Compared to other live-action movies featuring animals talking to humans, even the terrible ones such as Zookeeper, Yogi Bear, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and even the fucking Eddie Murphy iteration of Dr. Dolittle, you got the sense that these humans were actually speaking to the animals. Here it’s so clearly faux and incomprehensible that it becomes random as hell. So many random animals would pop up without any logical rhyme or reason that it’s frustratingly confusing. And fuck continuity, too. In the climax, there is an action sequence with a bear, an ostrich, and a duck. Then, when a character gets up, they ask, “Is that a giraffe and a fox in my room?” The following shot is the giraffe and fox staring down at her when they weren’t even in the room to begin with, AT ALL. That being said, even if this was in the hands of some actual talent, this still would’ve been some bullshit. It would’ve made it WATCHABLE bullshit at least, but bullshit nonetheless. This damn screenplay is a hodgepodge of one too many different elements from better family features that secured an identity for themselves. One moment it’s the original Dr. Dolittle adaptation by Hugh Lofting, then it faceplants into ripping off Pirates of the Carribean, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and The Hobbit without giving any focus or any logical fluency and it has you asking questions all the way through. As the story kicks off, you feel the multiple hands that touched this script tug back and forth. By the final draft, it was just this damaged pile of garbage that needed to be put out of its misery. Every aspect of this adaptation’s narrative is completely incohesive. The story feels like it was made by a Mad Libs randomizer. If this movie had any resemblance to a Disney channel series, it would’ve been So Random. All of the animals are present to make jokes or to have underdeveloped arcs. The origins of Dolittle’s apprentice, Tommy, and their budding friendship was also lazily underdeveloped and rushed. Even then, it’s the one-note blueprint of Tony’s relationship with Peter Parker, which this is too familiar.Holy shit, the humor is terrible. Aside from Michael Sheen (who made me laugh), every joke falls completely flat and it’s grating. Just as I wrote in my notes, “At least there’s no poop joke” Murphy’s Law came into fruition, existing in the form of a climax which — I shit you not (pun intended) — the third act features Dolittle pulling a giant leek out of a female dragon’s asshole so she could get over her constipation. This is a set piece in the climax to further the plot. Fucking January, man.The funniest thing about the movie was having Antonio Banderas play a pirate and Dolittle’s father-in-law when Banderas is only 5 years older than Robert Downey Jr. Yeah, 59-year-old Banderas is the father-in-law to 54-year-old RDJ as Dolittle. I was in my seat laughing that the romance Dolittle had with his wife was on some Florence Pugh and Zach Braff shit.
Damn, Universal. Two movies in a row that you’ve fucked up so hard. Holy shit. You better pray those Minions make you some money later on this year because the one-two punch of this and Cats… well, I hope to see you make some bank soon because it ain’t looking that hot right now! At least Cats was confident enough to stick out as its own identity and it’s making a bit of money even as we speak. But the sheer amount of laziness and incoherent storytelling for something as expensive as this… I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the inevitable news stories about how hard this bombed at the box office.God, RDJ. What an embarrassment. Go do some A24 movies. It does a body good after coming off a long-running franchise. Just ask Robert Pattinson.Rating: 1/5 | 26%
