Dolittle, starring Robert Downey Jr. and the voice talents of many others, is weird. Is it a bad movie? Is it a good movie directed at kids? Do most of Downey’s lines appear to be dubbed? And did that scene with the dragon’s butt really happen? The answer to all of these questions is yes.
Upon first seeing the trailer, I was admittedly a little excited. Might this finally be a film with a hero that cares deeply about the non-human world? Deeply enough to risk danger and death to save even the smallest creature? In the era of Climate Change and insane forest fires driving potentially driving animals to extinction, we need our cinematic heroes to fight for more than returning things to the status quo. We need heroes who will fight to transform the way we see the world so we can walk gentler upon it. Was Dolittle this film? No, it wasn’t.
Dolittle is an emotionless and poorly executed film. It has a ham-fisted plot where Dolittle must save a queen we don’t care about by, using animals as tools instead of friends, speaking an accent we can barely understand, and it all culminates in Dolittle pulling a bag-pipe out of a dragon’s ass. The film is a stiff paper mache cringe-fest.
Will your kids enjoy it? Yeah probably. Will you enjoy it? LIkely not. Downey does not give a great post-MCU performance. I would love to see RDJ take on a role the complete opposite of Tony Stark and completely nail it. Chris Evans appeared to have a blast playing a knitted-sweater wearing narcissist in Knives Out. Dolittle could’ve been played as a Luddite, hopelessly clinging to a slower-paced world in a kingdom obsessed with progress.
But nope. Dolittle is just not that good of a film. Knowing that it underwent extensive reshoots, I’m curious to see what ended up on the cutting room floor. This film smacks of studio-overreach. And I’ll say it again, just because you can do almost in CGI doesn’t mean you should. Having some real animals thrown into shooting would have done loads to help a view buy-in.
In the end, Dolittle is another forgettable January film. Hopefully, RDJ can make a strong post-MCU appearance elsewhere and demonstrate that he can do more than Tony Stark. Should you rush out to see it with your kids? No. Should you wait till it’s on Netflix and you can turn it on to entertain the kids while you do something else? Yes.