Dolittle: Third Time No Charm for Pointless Remake Neither Stars Nor CGI Can Save

By Liam Lacey

Rating: D

A family movie with lots of CGI-talking animals and star Robert Downey Jr. hiding his charisma, Dolittle is a tiresomely chaotic concoction, tossing in Victorian settings, a Pacific island quest, and script that never seems to know where it’s going from one scene to the next. With Downey effectively upstaged by sets and chattery creatures, it’s of interest only for the inverse proportion between the onscreen results and the talent of the cast.

This is the third movie adaptation of Hugh Loftings’ early-20th century children’s books featuring a Victorian-era doctor with a gift for speaking to animals. The Rex Harrison–starring 1967 musical version was a multiple-Oscar nominated box office bomb that left us with the Sammy Davis Jr. hit, “If I Could Talk to The Animals.” Eddie Murphy’s 1998 mid-career placeholder Doctor Dolittle was a mild goof, memorable for its five-year-old level poop jokes trailed by some direct-to-video sequels.

The current version is a $175 million miasma of missed opportunities, featuring a quartet of writers including director Stephen Gaghan, although with reshoots from director Jonathan Liebesman (Teenage Mutant Turtles) following test screenings.

Downey’s Dolittle, talking in an unexpected Welsh accent, is introduced as a grieving widower, buried under a bushy beard mourning for late wife, Lily, who died at sea years before. Now he lives on a walled estate with a menagerie of animals, voiced by several Oscar winners, including Emma Thompson as his macaw Poly, who is also the movie’s off-screen narrator. The rest of the voice cast includes Marion Cotillard (fox), Rami Malek (gorilla), John Cena (polar bear), Octavia Spencer (duck), and Selena Gomez (giraffe).

Dolittle’s retirement is interrupted by a young man, Tommy Tubbins (Harry Collet), who becomes Dolittle’s apprentice, and a royal messenger, Lady Rose (Carmel Landiado) seeking help for the ailing young queen (Jessie Buckley) who is on her deathbed. Dolittle will, for some reason, lose his estate if the queen dies, which motivates him to clean up and head to Buckingham Palace. It becomes quickly evident that the queen’s doctor (Michael Sheen) and chief adviser (Jim Broadbent) are poisoning her. Dolittle and his crew must find a journal that provides the location of the antidote.

All this leads to a sub-Indiana Jones quest narrative, in which Dolittle and his animal and human crew arrive at the vaguely Islamic-looking fantasy island kingdom of King Rassouli (a growling Antonio Banderas), who captures the doctor and threatens to feed him to a tiger (Ralph Fiennes). Moments of apparent seriousness are consistently disrupted by low gag humour (the tiger gets kicked in the balls, there’s a flatulent dragon), as the entourage pursue their quest for the sacred “Eden Tree” whose sap provides the antidote they seek. If only there were an antidote to the ailments of this oddly charmless and misbegotten movie.

Dolittle. Directed by Steven Gaghan. Written by Gaghan, Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Thomas Shepherd, based on the books by Hugh Lofting. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Harry Collett, Jim Broadbent, and Michael Sheen. Opens wide January 17.