Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
What a truly underwhelming film.
The cast of “Dolittle” is beyond stellar : Emma Thompson, Ralph Fiennes, Jim Broadbent, Antonio Banderas, Selena Gomez, Rami Malek, Octavia Spencer, Marion Cotillard, John Cena, Frances de la Tour…I mean, gosh, whew, yes, whew, WHAT a stunning line up.
The special effects are absolutely super.
The story line and the plot, however, are terrible.
Truly terrible.
Really & truly terrible.
You have to wonder what on earth Emma Thompson, Ralph Fiennes, Jim Broadbent, Antonio Banderas, Selena Gomez, Rami Malek, Octavia Spencer, Marion Cotillard, John Cena, & Frances de la Tour were thinking about when they signed up for this rambling, over-complicated, silly film?
Did they not read the script beforehand?
Did they not wonder what Queen Victoria and a scheming courtier (Jim Broadbent…why? Why oh why oh why?) were doing in this story?
I imagine little children might like it, because there are talking animals, though they might not get the Queen Victoria/scheming courtier sub plot. Lucky children.
Oh, silly me, I forgot to mention Robert Downey Jr.
What can one say about Robert Downey Jr?
God alone knows what accent he was aiming for, but I thought he started out as vaguely American-actor-trying-to-sound-Scottish, but then he drifted off into American-actor-trying-to-sound-Welsh, and a lot of the time he sounded as though he was mumbling, & you couldn’t hear him properly, so it was all a bit sad, really.
The film was too long, too convoluted, and too unfunny.
There should have been lots of charm & lots of humour, but other than the tiger reverting to being a cat & chasing a beam of light, that was it.
You could happily have axed 1/3 of the film without anyone noticing.
A total & utter waste of a fab cast.
A total & utter waste of amazing animation of the animals.
If you have little children, then I think they’ll enjoy it. There’s nothing the little dears can’t cope with – there’s even a flatulent dragon.
Yup, it descends to that level of slapstick.