If man could talk to the animals, what conversations would we have? Personally, I’d like to engage my family’s nearly blind, nearly deaf Shih Tzu, Emmy, in a discussion of the hole she has scratched into the side of her neck. We didn’t notice it until the smell of death wafted from across the living room; upon closer examination, we discovered a nauseating, John F. Kennedy half-dollar-sized crater of flesh and blood and gunk of unspeakable coloring, with a newly burst abscess that screamed infection. Frankly, four rounds of antibiotics later, I’d like to ask her what the hell she was thinking.
To get metaphorical, that damn dog’s neck hole — reeking with an ungodly, unforgivable stench of nostrils-torn-asunder rot — is the Robert Downey Jr. vehicle Dolittle.
Remember how much Eddie Murphy’s cachet suffered by wallowing in family-friendly dreck like 1998’s Dr. Dolittle? Downey must have forgotten, in the process tainting the Iron-clad reputation he worked so hard over the last decade to rebuild. With Murphy now enjoying the crest of career resurgence, and Downey stuck chatting up and trading barbs with stunningly unfunny CGI animals, the two superstars appear to have switched places. Who saw that coming?
Downey’s venereal-looking veterinarian is called out of retirement to retrieve a faraway fruit to save the life of a comatose Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley, TV’s Chernobyl). Attempting to foil Dolittle at every turn, Boris Badenov-style, is Dr. Müdfly (Michael Sheen, 2016’s Passengers). Aiding Dolittle just as often are anthropomorphic members of his mobile menagerie, voiced by some supremely talented people — including John Cena, Emma Thompson, Kumail Nanjiani, Octavia Spencer, Ralph Fiennes and, immortally, “Rami Malek as Chee-Chee” — all of whom have the blessed fortune to be only heard and not seen, especially since their jokes land as neatly as elephant feces.
Who else to helm this artificially sunny, PG-rated ego project/confection of fauna, folly and fantasy? Almost any director but the one who got the job: Stephen Gaghan, he of the suicide bombers and electrocuted children of the political-corruption drama Syriana. His nonmusical remake of 1967’s Doctor Dolittle emerges as a soulless, artless, witless, “cash, please!” corporate enterprise — one in which no one had the guts to even suggest to Downey that his Jack Sparrow-style accent was not the least bit cute, but thoroughly repellent. In which computer rendering of the sometimes-disproportionate animals appears to have been halted around 65% completion and deemed “good enough.” In which poor Antonio Banderas is reduced to parading around in genie pants.
In the opening-weekend matinee I attended, an audience full of kids — kids, for chrissakes, comedy’s easiest lay! — could not be bothered to laugh, except when a dragon ripped a massive fart in Downey’s face. He deserved it.
Dolittle? Most certainly do not. But if you are forced? Do nap. —Rod Lott