DOLITTLE
½ Robert Downey Jr. as Dr. John Dolittle / Antonio Banderas as King Rassouli / Jessie Buckley as Queen Victoria / Michael Sheen as Dr. Blair Müdfly / Jim Broadbent as Lord Thomas Badgley / Harry Collett as Tommy Stubbins / Emma Thompson as Polynesia (voice) / Rami Malek as Chee-Chee (voice) / John Cena as Yoshi (voice) / Kumail Nanjiani as Plimpton (voice) / Octavia Spencer as Dab-Dab (voice) / Tom Holland as Jip (voice) / Craig Robinson as Fleming (voice) / Ralph Fiennes as Barry (voice) / Selena Gomez as Betsy (voice) / Marion Cotillard as Tutu (voice) / Carmen Ejogo as Regine (voice) Directed by Stephen Gaghan / Written by Gaghan, Dan Gregor, and Doug Mand |
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I've
been hearing through the movie grapevine that DOLITTLE was a long
gestating passion project for Robert Downey Jr..
Okay,
then. •••SPOILERS••• The ending of this film has a dragon massively farting into the actor's wide open mouth and eyes, followed by him shoving his hands up the same dragon’s ass and pulling out a set of bagpipes. This
piece of absolute wasteful trash cost $175 million to produce. This
was also RDJ's first feature film starring role since AVENGERS:
ENDGAME. Let
that settle in for a bit. I stared at the screen in stunned disbelief throughout a majority of my screening of DOLITTLE, and if that didn't bother me enough the overwhelming sensation of silence in the crowd with me also pinpointed towards dire warning signs. Since this is a family fantasy comedy, the lack of any filmgoer even modestly chuckling at anything in DOLITTLE is telling. Perhaps most damming is, as mentioned, this represents Downey's first film since he exited the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This film. DOLITTLE. A remake of a remake of an adaptation of a book. And it was shot years ago, then underwent nearly a month of reshoots, and then had its release changed not once, not twice, but three times, finally being unceremoniously dumped in the cinematic craptastic graveyard that is January. Oh, did I say that this film cost nearly $200 million to produce? I'm
sure I did, but did you also know that it was co-written by Stephen Gaghan,
the same man that wrote such "family friendly" classics like
TRAFFIC and SYRIANA? The original 1967 DOCTOR DOLITTLE was a legendary and
spectacular flop (the just-okay 1998 Eddie Murphy remake of the same name,
not so much). History, as it
always seems to, is repeating itself here with DOLITTLE.
This is a movie of unpardonable and borderline unwatchable
wretchedness. This movie has just one good scene. Honestly. It's the animated opening sequence that introduces us to its version of Dolittle, a celebrated doctor that has a supernatural ability to communicate with any animal that walks, crawls, slithers, jumps, or flies on the planet. In this montage we witness the opening of his sanctuary to take in the strays and injured of the world, but we also bare witness to the loss of his wife in Lily, and how that forever broke the man, leading him to a Howard Hughes-esque state of self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world. The animation during all of this is superb, evoking the spirit and feel of a bedtime storybook. It all comes depressingly crashing down, though, as soon as the film segues to live action and we first meet Dolittle. At
this point, the whole enterprise begins a slow burn dive into the
insufferable. When we first meet Dolittle in the flesh he's anything but an inspired hero to the animal kingdom. He looks thin, pale, bearded, and thoroughly out of it, kind of akin to Tom Hanks in CASTWAY after being secluded on that island alone for years. He hates people in general and loathes any contact with them, much more preferring to pass time with his menagerie of animals that reside with him on the preserve. We get most of the expositional details from a voiceover narration provided by a parrot (Emma Thompson), which comes off pathetically like the end result of some hasty, last minute creative changes, but it also painfully reminded me of the fact that Downey and Thompson have multiple Oscar nominations between the two of them...and they - alongside a plethora of other Oscar nominees and other A-listers - decided to sign the dotted contract line to appear here. How.
Utterly. Sad. We
then move on to the basics of this already malnourished plot, which
involves Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado) serving as an emissary for Queen
Victoria herself (Jessie Buckley), the latter of which is dying via a
mysterious illness and requires immediate attention and care.
She believes that there is indeed a cure that - yup! - only
Dolittle can locate and retrieve. Of
course, the longstanding hermit wants none of it, only begrudgingly coaxed
into the task by Rose and a new ally in Stubbins (Harry Collett), who
eventually becomes Robin to Dolittle's Batman.
Within no time, Dolittle, Stubbins, and his animal clan - including
a nervous gorilla (Rami Malek, another Oscar winner here!), a
sarcastic ostrich (Kumail Nanjiani, another Oscar nominee here!),
and a buff polar bear (John Cena, definitely not an Oscar nominee
or winner) - set sale to seek out the Queen's cure, but there are traitors
in the Royal Palace that want to see Dolittle fail and the Queen die
(played by Michael Sheen and Jim Broadbent, both - sigh! - Oscar
nominees as well). Oh wait,
Dolittle does have a chance meeting on his journey with King Rassouli
(Antonio Banderas, a recent Oscar nominee!), who hates the doctor because
of past indiscretions, leading him to unleash his pet tiger (Ralph Fiennes,
another...you see a pattern here?) to take him out. I
said that there was only one good scene in DOLITTLE. I lied. The
other good scene involves Dolittle crafting a makeshift laser pointer by
reflecting sunlight on the ground to distract the man-hungry tiger from
devouring him. That was
funny. And cute.
But the rest of this film is so utterly bereft of genuine warmth,
humor, and charm that I honestly struggled to stay awake while watching -
make that enduring - the story unfold.
Now, the idea of having an actor of Downey's limitless charismatic
stature play an eccentric man that can talk to animals is intriguing, to
say the least. Alas,
something was just...off...in the marketing of DOLITTLE, seeing as there
were few instances of hearing the titular character speak in the trailers.
After watching the final product, I understand why.
Not only does a majority of his dialogue seem to be the product of
an awful lot of post-production ADR, but the actor sports one of the most
gruff, monosyllabic, and annoyingly idiosyncratic and non-region specific
accents I've ever heard in a movie. A
follower of mine of Twitter told me that RDJ was utilizing a Welsh accent
here, but you could have fooled me; Dolittle sounds like Jack Sparrow
meets Sherlock Holmes, only infinitely more mumbly, raspy, and impossible
to understand. Downey has
made a career out of playing loveable ego-driven misfits that go against
the grain, but in DOLITTLE he plays less an affable rogue than he does
lazily inhabit a misanthropic weirdo without any vitality whatsoever.
The actor has never given such an embarrassing performance in a
mainstream film before. |
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