Rex Harrison famously endured getting urinated upon by real sheep during the filming of the 1967 musical “Doctor Dolittle,” while the 2020 version of “Dolittle” sees Robert Downey Jr. removing bagpipes from a CG dragon’s rectum before receiving a faceful of gastric wind as a reward.
Whichever actor had it worse, it’s the audience who loses. Downey’s revival of Hugh Lofting’s legendary loquacious veterinarian, one who can communicate with any member of any species, splats onto the screen like horse dung, with few laughs and no charm. Even the actor’s legendary charisma, which this project sorely needed, gets tamped down by making a depressed widower the hero of a kiddie movie and by having that widower mumble in an accent that’s possibly Welsh, perhaps Irish, maybe Scottish, but definitely the enemy of comedy.
“Dolittle” doesn’t have a fraction of the verve of the similarly misguided “Cats,...
Whichever actor had it worse, it’s the audience who loses. Downey’s revival of Hugh Lofting’s legendary loquacious veterinarian, one who can communicate with any member of any species, splats onto the screen like horse dung, with few laughs and no charm. Even the actor’s legendary charisma, which this project sorely needed, gets tamped down by making a depressed widower the hero of a kiddie movie and by having that widower mumble in an accent that’s possibly Welsh, perhaps Irish, maybe Scottish, but definitely the enemy of comedy.
“Dolittle” doesn’t have a fraction of the verve of the similarly misguided “Cats,...
- 1/15/2020
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
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