Dolittle Director: Stephen Gaghan
Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Martin Sheen, Tom Holland, Emma Thompson and others
Watch Official Trailer of the movie Dolittle 2020
As we near the end of beloved star Robert Downey Jr’s latest film, Dolittle, we are met with an episode so utterly nonsensical, few things in life could top it.
There he is, the ‘billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, genius,’ with both his arms up a CGI dragon’s behind, pulling out bagpipes from her rectum. In that moment, you wonder if it is your duty as a fellow human being to write to Marvel on Downey’s behalf, urging them to take him back.
I’d much rather watch a dozen mediocre films of him flying about in tin suits than giving colonoscopies to fantastical creatures.
Dolittle is a train wreck of such colossal measures that no amount of fighting writers, meddling studio heads or incessant cash flow could have saved. The script -- much like the motivation to make even a passable film -- is non-existent, the performances are uninspired and the CGI undercooked.
I racked my brains hard to come up with a single good thing to say about it but the best I can manage is that it’s short so the suffering ends quickly enough.
Director Stephen Gaghan’s Dolittle is based on Hugh Lofting’s second book in the Dolittle series: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle. Unlike Eddie Murphy’s 1998 film which was set in present time, this one stays true to the period when the books were published. So, here we are in the 19th century, when a young Queen of England has fallen gravely ill and requires help from one Doctor Dolittle. The doctor, however, has resigned himself to a life of isolation from humans since his wife died—still an unchallenged, easiest way to bring ‘depth’ to a hollow, studio-manufactured character. Robert Downey Jr in a still from Dolittle. Robert Downey Jr in a still from Dolittle. Of course, the Doctor has found company in his impossible assortment of exotic creatures, gathered from world over, played by internet’s favourite actors such as Tom Holland, John Cena, Selena Gomez and others. There’s a scaredy gorilla, a wise parrot, a sassy ostrich, a nice polar bear, a squirrel that maintains a journal like Rorschach, a half-wit duck, and a dog that is so dull I can’t even muster an adjective for him. As is tradition with adventure films, the Doctor takes some convincing before he finally relents and embarks upon a voyage to distant lands, in search of a cure for the queen.
Oh! I forgot to mention there is also a tow-away boy with him but it’s okay, you wouldn’t notice him anyway. In between the dozen of them, the animals may just manage to wriggle out half a dozen laughs (a generous word for letting a guff of air out your nostrils) through the entirety of the film.
They are cartoonish and just plain boring, unable to induce empathy or even a single ‘aww’.
No comments:
Post a Comment