The reviews for Robert Downey, Jr.-led talking animal adventure The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, the Universal Pictures movie stars Downey as Dr. John Dolittle, a physician with the ability to talk to animals.
Dolittle was arguably in trouble from the start, with a bloated $175 million production budget that seemed to vastly overestimate public interest in a Doctor Dolittle reboot. It ran into further problems after principal photography was complete, with poor test screenings leading to the studio bringing in directors Chris McKay and Jonathan Liebesman to try and punch up the material during reshoots.
If the talks to the animals go so wrong? Here's what the reviewers had to say.
"Dolittle [is] an object lesson in cinematic incoherence that would be easy to dismiss as a hot mess if it could even raise a temperature. Instead, this out-and-out disaster dissolves in a puddle of botched intentions that will leave children sad and confused and adults scratching their heads... The low point comes when the doctor pulls a bagpipe out of a dragon’s ass."
"One of the worst cinematic fiascos I’ve seen in years... It would be an exaggeration to say that Dolittle has a plot. The viewing experience more resembles a series of malfunctioning screen savers in which Downey Jr. twitches his head left and right while animals gallivant around him, complaining of various ailments while tossing off hacky one-liners."
"The film’s humor... reeks of after-the-fact punch-up prompted by negative test-audience . That is to say, Dolittle is full of anachronistic pop culture references and poop and fart humor, jokes delivered in suspiciously low-impact style by the film’s animated animals."
"If I could talk to the animals, I’d say one thing: Please make it stop... The adventures at sea and on the islands play out like low-rent, animal-centric scenes from a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. By the time the doc endures massive dragon flatulence while performing emergency surgery on the fire-breathing creature, Dolittle has solidified its standing as a spectacularly terrible multi-vehicle pileup."
The general theme of Dolittle's negative reviews is that there's not much to love about the movie: the jokes aren't funny, director Stephen Gaghan (best known for serious dramas and thrillers like Syriana) was an odd choice for the material, and the film is not helped by most of the ing characters being CGI. Even Robert Downey, Jr. - fresh off his exit from the Marvel Cinematic Universe - wasn't enough to save it, with critics calling out his bizarre choice of accent (an attempt at Welsh) and strange character tics.
The general consensus is that Dolittle is an early contender for the worst movie of the year - though it did manage to garner a handful of positive reviews. Here are some of the nicer things that critics had to say about Dolittle:
"Once a standard voyage sets in, and the various A-list voiced animals interact with each other... Dolittle‘s family-friendly mentality kicks in, and the journey is perfectly harmless... As a vibrantly coloured, loud, rather ridiculous, age-appropriate adventure film, it’s very much in the lane it needs to be; and, sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with a film that aims for simplicity."
"The best way to describe this movie is madness. With a Michael Sheen performance to rival his Breaking Dawn laugh and Antonio Banderas being a hot king, the movie is very much a family adventure and one that should be approached with an open mind and heart. If you want to go into something and just laugh and have fun, then you’ll enjoy Dolittle."
If you're feeling brave (or enjoy seeing train wreck movies for the entertainment value), Dolittle is now in theaters. However, if it's a big screen revival you're looking for this weekend, you may be better off sticking with Bad Boys For Life.
