When Dolittle begins, bringing us another attempt at bringing Hugh Lofting’s beloved veterinarian character to life, it opens with an animated prologue that sets up the history of our titular doctor. It’s a lovely 2D animated sequence that seems to incorporate rotoscoping elements with its characters, and it sets up a whimsical tone that is accentuated by Danny Elfman’s lively score. It does a compelling job at setting up the character, his personal stakes, and the feeling that you’re going to be entering a grand adventure.
And then the actual movie starts…
Even if you were not aware of the numerous difficulties this film faced during production and up to completion, where it tested so poorly that Jonathan Liebesman and Chris McKay were brought in to oversee the reshoots, it becomes increasingly obvious as the film goes on that something has gone awry, be it the occasionally jarring edit, sudden plot development, or introduction to characters who will show up for a moment, and never be seen again. Much of the problem seems to be rooted (at least, if you go by the narrative proposed by a recent leak) in the fact that the material, both in terms of its appeal to a young audience, combined with the VFX heavy nature of it proved not to suit the strengths of its co-writer and director, Stephen Gaghan, who has been the guy behind plenty of family friendly fare such as Abandon, Syriana, Gold, and his script for Traffic.
The setup seems simple enough. Doctor John Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr.), a famed, but now reclusive vet is summoned by the Queen after she has gotten mysteriously ill. He realizes that he can help her with a special fruit that can only be found on an island, the location of which is unknown, and can only be found through a journal by Dolittle’s deceased wife. So, he embarks on an adventure to retrieve the journal, and find the fruit, and joining him is Tommy (Harry Collett), a new self-appointed apprentice, and all his animal friends.
On the surface, the things that don’t work about Dolittle are mostly the kind of mundane and bland elements that many films aimed at young audiences – or really, just any kind of movie – suffer from. The plotting is sloppy, characters are one-note, emotional beats aren’t earned, certain story choices miss out on potentially interesting angles and diversions. It’s exactly the kind of stuff you’d see in any disposable bad movie.
However, there are some occasions where the film would do something that is so random, so odd, and so beguiling that it becomes bad in a much more interesting and engaging way. For starters, RDJ is performing with an indistinguishable accent that seems to change nationalities from scene to scene, going from French to Irish to Stewie Griffin. We’re introduced to him in the flesh playing chess with a gorilla, speaking to him using gorilla noises and gestures, and things only get weirder from there. Certain plot elements also veer into the surreal at times, one such point that comes in late in the game involves Dolittle removing a bagpipe from a dragon’s asshole with his bare hands.
The humor is largely very lackluster, and goes for the easiest possible laugh at every possible moment. Most of it falls flat, but every now and then there would be a gag so devoid of wit and cleverness that it almost circles back to being funny. At one point, the crew gets a hold of a new ship given to them by a pirate king/Dolittle’s father-in-law, Rassouli – played by Antonio “only-five-years-older-than-RDJ” Banderas – and there’s a beat where they discover something left behind, a large shard, covering something; they remove the fabric revealing someone already on board, a prisoner stuck in a pillory, who cheerfully says “I’m Jeff,” before the scene abruptly end. Jeff is never seen again. Stuff like this happens a couple of times, and I found it hard not to be amused by the sheer randomness of these moments.
The animals are voiced by an all-star cast including the likes of Rami Malek, Kumail Nanjiani, Octavia Spencer, John Cena, Tom Holland, and so many others who are frankly speaking all way too good for this kind of material. The voiceover work is perfunctory at best, and doesn’t give much personality to the animals beyond what you would expect for that particular actor. The live action performances fare much better. Beyond RDJ’s bizarre performance, the rest of the live action cast members seem to be much more aware of the cheesy nature of the production and act accordingly. The MVP is undoubtedly MIchael Sheen, who plays the villain. Sheen has always been a wonderful actor, but he is remarkable whenever he decides to go full ham, which he does so here, providing the most – and only – consistently funny aspect of the film.
I suppose one could technically call Dolittle a disaster, but it’s for the most part not as ambitious and weird enough to be one. It’s not a big swing, like in the way Cats was late last year. The story and characters are born out of and function like the kind of light and plucky players you’d see in one of these family friendly adventure films. The occasional strange choice will certainly bring you pause every fifteen minutes, and to anyone in the right mood, a lot of twisted pleasure at seeing so much money being burned on screen. It’s definitely not as mesmerizingly awful as Cats. I’m sure it will provide a serviceable distraction for very young children, but the legacy of a film like Dolittle will be the occasional viral Twitter post a few years from now where a clip of RDJ will play with the dumbfounded text above it reading “this is what Robert Downey Jr. did after Avengers: Endgame!”