Robert Downey Jr. makes an oddly distant animal doctor in this poor, muddled family adventure. Michael Sheen offers some welcome comic relief, though the animals’ relentless chatter soon makes even modest pleasures difficult to enjoy.
A doctor who can speak to animals ought to be a useful centre for a family adventure. There are patients to help, peculiar friends to make and human rules to ignore, all without having to explain much. Stephen Gaghan’s Dolittle is a poor, muddled film that keeps interrupting those possibilities with another quip. The screenplay, by Doug Mand, Dan Gregor and Stephen Gaghan, adds complications so readily that simply enjoying the doctor’s company becomes a considerable effort.
Robert Downey Jr. plays Dr. John Dolittle with a distracting Welsh accent and a delivery that often makes the words difficult to catch. The accent itself need not have been a problem. The trouble is that his muttering gives us little sense of what he wants from whoever is listening. A withdrawn doctor could still be funny, curious or unexpectedly tender, and his preference for animals over people offers a reasonable place to start. This performance seldom finds the warmth needed to make us follow him willingly.
Michael Sheen fares better as Dr. Blair Müdfly, allowing himself the broad, spiteful comedy that the material needs. His enjoyment is welcome in a film whose leading man so often seems preoccupied. Rami Malek’s Chee-Chee and John Cena’s Yoshi are among the animals competing for attention, but the stream of remarks gives their voices little chance to become personalities. We were bored by their chatter, because another interruption so often takes the place of letting a conversation develop into something funny.
Craig Alpert and Chris Lebenzon’s editing shifts between palace intrigue, animal antics and crude jokes without finding a comfortable pace for any of them. A scene barely establishes what we should care about before something else demands attention. The constant activity becomes tiring because it rarely builds anticipation; there is little pleasure in guessing what these characters might do next. At 101 minutes, the film should not feel this laborious.
Guillermo Navarro’s crowded images do the animals few favours, especially when the humans’ eyelines fail to meet their digital companions. We need to believe that these creatures share a space before we can believe they share a friendship. Dominic Watkins’s period surroundings and Jenny Beavan’s costumes are more persuasive than the dialogue, with its determinedly modern attitude. The clutter nevertheless makes it difficult to appreciate the production design for long.
Danny Elfman’s music tries to encourage a sense of adventure, but it cannot make events matter when the characters have made so little impression. Nor is the problem simply that the humour is crude: a family comedy can make a bodily function funny if somebody has bothered to construct a joke around it. Too often, Dolittle seems satisfied to have mentioned one. Against the modest requirements of a talking-animal adventure, it falls short on affection, comic timing and the simple business of telling a story clearly.
Small children may enjoy the animals, and Michael Sheen provides a brief diversion for the adults. Neither is a good reason to commit the family evening to something this muddled. If the appeal is simply watching people and animals become friends, we would look elsewhere.
