Dolittle – A Movie A Day #85
Dolittle – A Movie A Day #85
I’ve heard lots of not-so-good things about Dolittle over the past few weeks, but as always, I like to judge for myself. I like Robert Downey Jr., and even though I haven’t enjoyed all of his movies, I’ll still go see pretty much anything he’s in. Plus, the cast of voices for the animals is great. The trailers didn’t look fantastic to me, but they didn’t look bad either. So I was mildly looking for to Dolittle. After seeing it, I don’t think it’s fantastic, but it’s certainly not as terrible as some of the dog-piling online reviews would lead you to believe. I enjoyed it.
RDJ plays, of course, Dr. Dolittle. We’re told at the beginning of the movie about how Dolittle can talk to animals and how he used to travel the world with his wife Lily, and they created a family of animal friends as Dolittle helped each and eery one of them. Lily disappeared while on a voyage to find a mysterious island, and since then Dolittle has closed his animal hospital, living like a hermit with only his animal friends as company. But when the Queen Victoria falls deathly ill, Dolittle is pulled out of his self-imposed exile to try to save her (and his own home at the same time).
The plot follows the adventures of Dolittle, his band of jovial animal friends, and Stubbins, a young man who feels more at home with animals than he does at home. It’s a CGI-heavy adventure with quips, action, and some fun scenarios.
Some of the jokes weren’t for me, but really, I didn’t have any complaints about the movie. It’s light-hearted family fare. Could it have been better? Sure, but you can say that about any movie. I understand that there were a lot of pre-release shenanigans involving rewrites and reshoots, but all that really matters in the end is what makes it to the screen. What I saw was about what I expected: a fun family adventure with silly jokes and little in the way of any real danger or tense situations. It doesn’t always make sense (like, if Dolittle talks to the animals in their own “languages,” how do the animals all talk to each other?), but who cares? For a movie like this, making sense doesn’t matter as much as making a big, fun spectacle. I thought the spectacle was fine.