{"id":5924,"date":"2024-10-14T23:46:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T03:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=5924"},"modified":"2024-10-14T23:46:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T03:46:00","slug":"dolittle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/14\/dolittle\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolittle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Dolittle<\/strong> (2020)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Comedy-Adventure-Fantasy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some action, rude humor, brief language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Stephen Gaghan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stephan Gaghan, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Danny Elfman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Guillermo Navarro\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 17, 2020 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Jim Broadbent, Jessie Buckley, Harry Collett, Carmel Laniado, Ralph Ineson, Joanna Page, Sonny Ashbourne Serkis, Kasia Smutniak.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Voice cast: Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, John Cena, Kumail Nanjiani, Octavia Spencer, Tom Hollnad, Craig Robinson, Ralph Fiennes, Selena Gomez, Marion Cotillard, Carmen Ejogo, Frances de la Tour, Jason Mantzoukas.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $77M (US)\/$251.5M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: \u00bd*<\/p>\n

\u00a0Robert Downey Jr., once known as Tony Stark\/Iron Man of the MCU, is the featured human star of Dolittle<\/strong>. He plays an eccentric doctor with the ability to communicate with animals. Kids, the movie\u2019s target audience, will tell you that the animals are the real stars of the show. I\u2019d probably agree if the animals weren\u2019t CGI creations. To me, the real stars of Dolittle<\/strong> are the parents who brave out the entire agonizing 101 minutes for the sake of their children\u2019s amusement. It\u2019s absolutely, unequivocally awful. It\u2019s like somebody collected real animal fecal matter and digitalized it. It\u2019s pure crap!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dolittle<\/strong>, the third cinematic rendering of the 19th<\/sup> century literary character created by Hugh Lofting, is latest casualty of post-production repairs following poor test screenings. Originally set for release last spring, it was delayed while it underwent three weeks of re-shoots and script doctoring by Chris McKay (Robot Chicken, The LEGO Batman Movie). As far as I can see, it didn\u2019t help. It\u2019s still a confused, unfunny mess that deserves its spot in the movie deadlands of January.<\/p>\n

\u00a0An animated prologue informs us that John Dolittle was once a happily married man who loved having adventures with his wife. He went into seclusion after she died at sea during a solo expedition. For years, he\u2019s been holed up in his mansion with his menagerie of talking animals (only he can understand them) which includes a macaw (Thompson, Nanny McPhee), a bespectacled dog (Holland, the latest Spider-Man), a duck (Spencer, Hidden Figures), an ostrich (Nanjiani, The Big Sick), a gorilla (Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody), a polar bear (Cena, Daddy\u2019s Home 2) and besties, a giraffe (Gomez, Hotel Transylvania) and a fox (Cotillard, The Dark Knight Rises).<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot has Dolittle being summoned to the bedside of an ailing Queen Victoria (Buckley, Judy) where he\u2019s tasked with trying to stop her death-by-poisoning by her personal physician Dr. Mudfly (Sheen, Masters of Sex), an old schoolmate and rival of Dolittle, and chair member Lord Badgley (Broadbent, Paddington). To do this, he will need to retrieve his wife\u2019s diary as it will lead him to a legendary tree that bears magical healing fruit. The diary is in the possession of pirate king Rassouli (Banderas, Spy Kids) who has a personal grudge against Dolittle. He embarks on his quest joined by his animal pals and his young, self-appointed apprentice Tommy (Collett), a boy who loves animals as much as Dolittle.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dolittle<\/strong>, directed by Stephen Gaghan of all people, is a three-make. The first version is the notorious 1967 musical flop starring Rex Harrison. The second is the one from \u201898 starring Eddie Murphy as the titular character. It was so-so at best (and I\u2019m being generous) but did well enough at the box office that we got a really rotten sequel three years later. Dolittle<\/strong> makes Eddie\u2019s movies look better and better by comparison. Nothing in this movie works. NOTHING! A lot of its problems have to do with Gaghan. While not necessarily a poor director, he\u2019s a poor choice of directors for Dolittle<\/strong>. He\u2019s never worked in comedy before. His resume includes Syriana (as writer and director) as well as the screenplay for Traffic. He also worked on duds like Abandon, Gold and the 2004 remake of The Alamo. His style is too heavy-handed for light material like Dolittle<\/strong>. Clumsy as it is clunky, it\u2019s put together in a haphazard manner that strongly suggests somebody else stepped in and attempted to salvage the costly project ($175 million!) only for it to still fail. The screenplay (co-written by Gaghan and two others) is convoluted and sloppily written. Certain plot points, like Dolittle losing his mansion if the Queen dies, are mishandled. The ease with which Tommy bails on his family to set sail with Dolittle is nowhere near plausible. I know that\u2019s quite a thing to say about a movie featuring talking animals, but these are the things you notice when the main story isn\u2019t worth paying attention to.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The CGI is just that, CGI. Disney did it better in last year\u2019s live-action Lion King. The effects in Dolittle<\/strong> are the discount brand version. Much of the time, it\u2019s unclear which animal is speaking. The voices have a strange disembodied quality to them; it\u2019s like the actors recorded their dialogue in separate facilities at different times. It doesn\u2019t sound conversational. This applies to the human actors as well. There\u2019s a lot of looped dialogue that further betrays the post-production patch job.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting, if you can call it that, is horrendous. Downey may as well have phoned it in for all the energy he doesn\u2019t bring to his character. In fact, he barely registers as a character at all. Other than the ability to talk to the animals, I can\u2019t think of a single defining trait. The only performance worth mentioning is Sheen who hams it up to the point of embarrassment as a cartoon villain not too far removed from Snidely Whiplash. He may have even twirled his moustache a couple of times. In most cases, this would be fun. In Dolittle<\/strong>, it only serves to emphasize how bad everything else is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dolittle<\/strong> is boring and lifeless. It\u2019s not even a little bit cute. I didn\u2019t laugh once. Sheen\u2019s nutty performance is the only reason I\u2019m giving this thing a half star. It\u2019s so out of sync with the rest of the movie, you can\u2019t help but take notice. BTW, this isn\u2019t exactly a compliment. This movie is a complete embarrassment for all involved and a royal mess from start to finish. Sadly, it\u2019s not the interesting kind of mess. I fought to stay awake during most of Dolittle<\/strong> and let me tell you, it was a fight I would have been glad to lose. My time would have been better spent taking a nap than watching this abomination of a family movie. I guarantee whatever dream I had would have been more entertaining. That includes my recurring dream about being trapped in a theater showing a really bad movie…. wait a minute!\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dolittle (2020)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Comedy-Adventure-Fantasy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some action, rude humor, brief language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Stephen Gaghan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stephan Gaghan, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Danny Elfman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Guillermo Navarro\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 17, 2020 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Jim Broadbent, Jessie Buckley, Harry Collett, Carmel Laniado, Ralph Ineson, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6147,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Dolittle-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5924"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6149,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5924\/revisions\/6149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}