Movie Review: 'Dolittle' is Desperately Misguided

Dolittle is the single most misguided movie this side of Cats. This Robert Downey Jr vehicle approximates what might have happened if Bialystock and Bloom instead of producing on Broadway, moved to Hollywood to pull off their comical con jobs. Dolittle cost close to $200 million dollars and the final product is one that only a scam artist attempting to make the greatest flop in history would think to release to the public.

Dolittle stars Robert Downey Jr as Dr John Dolittle a man who has learned to talk to animals. No, he has no magic, no wonder to what he does, the movie takes the position that anyone can learn to talk to animals in that animal’s language if they just try to learn it. None of the previous Dr Dolittle movies have been very good but at least they contained a little bit of stardust that made Dr Dolittle himself special.

Instead, we must cope with the visual of Robert Downey Jr’s Doctor humiliating himself with ludicrous animal noises that the filmmakers mistake for charming and quirky. No, it’s cringe-y and embarrassing. The worst part though is that it makes the Doctor himself less special. If anyone can learn to talk to animals then why do we care about this sad, jerky, oddball with all of the charm of someone who has spent the previous decade not speaking to other human beings.

The story of this Dr Dolittle indicates that when John Dolittle’s wife died in a shipwreck, he receded from the world, quarantining himself to his mansion with his few chosen animal friends and gave up on life. Dolittle is dragged back to the human world by the arrival of Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett), a sensitive youngster who has accidentally shot a squirrel and has followed one of Dolittle’s animal friends back to the mansion in hopes that Dolittle will save the creature.

Also arriving at Dolittle’s door at this moment, because the plot isn’t busy enough, is Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado), the Queen’s heiress. Lady Rose is on hand to summon Dolittle to the Palace where Dolittle’s long time friend and ally, Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley) lays dying. She wants Dolittle to rescue the Queen and posits that he owes the Queen for his mansion and the ability to live alone with the animals on the Queen’s dime.

Dolittle eventually agrees, after a lot of stumbling and time-wasting to introduce all of the celebrity voiced animals, and heads off to the palace riding an ostrich. At the palace, Dolittle mocks the Queen’s surgeon, Dr Mudfly (Michael Sheen) and determines that someone has been poisoning the Queen with Nightshade. The only cure is a mysterious root that cures all illness and may not be real.

To recover the magical root, the Doctor and his animals, along with new apprentice Tommy, must take a perilous oceanic adventure on the same route where Dolittle’s wife died on her fateful shipwreck. Along the way, Dolittle will contend with the various emotional scars of his animal friends, afraid to take this journey, or perhaps too brave in taking the journey, he must wrestle a tiger that is set upon him by his late wife’s father (Antonio Banderas), and he must perform a colonoscopy on a dragon,

By now I am sure you might be imagining a madcap adventure with cute talking animals and some swashbuckling by Downey Jr. Instead, what we get is a stultifyingly by the numbers movie that plods along inventing and overcoming predictable obstacles before arriving at a supremely obvious conclusion in the most lowbrow manner imaginable. If there is an incorrect storytelling decision to be made, you can be sure that director Stephen Gaghan will make it in the course of Dolittle.

Where to begin with the issues of Dolittle? Perhaps the choice of director is a good place to start. Just from a glance one could fairly surmise that a family adventure about a man that talks to animals might require some whimsy. So it boggles the mind then that the producers of Dolittle chose to hire the gritty writer of Traffic and writer-director of Syriana to provide such whimsy. To say this Dolittle thing is not a natural fit for Gaghan would be like saying Conor McGregor is not a natural fit as a child’s party clown.

As for star Robert Downey Jr, he appears to be off in his own universe throughout Dolittle. You might assume such spaciness is a charming character choice but no, it plays more as if Downey Jr were genuinely uncomfortable in this world and would rather be anywhere else than in Dolittle. Every choice Downey Jr makes appears to be one that he made so that the director might take the camera off of him.

The star chooses an incomprehensible accent that approximates bad attempts at English, Scottish, Irish and Australian all at once. It’s the kind of terrible accent that Americans put on to mock U.K friends. Downey Jr appears to put no effort into his role, and while it could be construed as a character choice, Dolittle’s constant retreats into the background come off as if Downey Jr wanted out of the movie and is crouching in the corner of the frame as a way of fulfilling a contractual obligation.

I honestly wonder if the character of Tommy Stubbins was added to the film after it appeared that Downey Jr no longer wanted to be in the movie and the filmmakers needed someone who could fill in the plot scenes that Downey Jr refused to take part in. At many points in Dolittle, Downey Jr is a supporting player off to the side while Harry Collett does some of the heavy plot lifting, something he’s clearly not prepared for.

Collett is not bad in Dolittle, he’s just overwhelmed. Downey Jr gives the kid very little to play against and many of his scenes are spent with the voice of John Cena as a polar bear and Emma Thompson as a cockatoo. These characters are saddled with the sad backstory and the exposition about Dolittle and his wife and how traumatized Dolittle is and it’s a lot of CGI telling rather than showing.

Even more embarrassing for the whole of Dolittle as opposed to just Downey Jr, is the dialogue of the CGI animals. I mentioned how awkwardly introduced we are to the idea that Dolittle has learned to talk to animals as opposed to having a magical quality, well what is being said once it transitions into dialogue is even more embarrassing than Downey Jr’s grunting and squawking. Gaghan and a team of three screenwriters were needed to write some of the most cringe-inducing dialogue outside of a Mountain Dew commercial.

The animals, voiced by the likes of John Cena, Kumail Nanjiani, Octavia Spencer, Tom Holland and Craig Robinson, among others, all speak in modern vernacular. Dudes, bros, pop culture references drop from the mouths of early 20th century animals and clang to the floor with an embarrassing thud. I know I am not supposed to care what the animals say and we can invent whatever logic we want to justify them speaking as they do, but none of it is funny and all of it plays like it was written by the marketing department at a soda company.

At one point in the movie we are introduced to a Fox voiced by Marion Cotillard and a giraffe voiced by Selena Gomez and the dialogue between the two is so strange and so awkward that you are left with the disturbing notion that the Fox and the Giraffe, known as Tutu and Betsy, may be a couple. I hope to God that I am over-analyzing this dialogue but I got that distinct impression and I really, really did not want that impression.

That should be enough to communicate to you, dear reader, just how stunningly misguided Dolittle is. This is not a movie that is fun-bad, it’s just bad. Dolittle is off-kilter in a fashion that is puzzling rather than charming. The movie is intended to be lighthearted and odd but ends up in a place where the oddity is uncomfortable and off-putting with zero charm. Robert Downey Jr is a big enough star that he might have been able to save the movie with a charming performance but since he doesn’t seem to want to be here, that’s not possible.