Howdy, it’s me The Blog Complainer and welcome to my review of Dolittle or before they realised they made a terrible movie I think it was going to be called Cats: Reimagined!
I had no expectations for this movie as I remember been only mildly entertained by the Eddie Murphy Dr Dolittle back when I didn’t needed to be too challenged by media to like it. So my zero expectations did not prepare me for how stupidly bad 2020 Dolittle is. By the way, I’m going to be spoiling the whole thing so if you are so infatuated with the Dr Dolittle franchise then maybe go away I guess.
Dolittle has a very generic kids movie plot and because of that I yawned so much that I felt tired after the movie was over. Still somehow it managed to mess that up with it’s confusing story, unreliable tone and all of the boring characters. We start off with a young kid who goes hunting with his dad. The young boy cannot stand people killing animals even though his dad is a paid hunter and, I presume, needs to kill some animals so they can have dinner tonight.
This conflict doesn’t matter as the story must move on so the boy breaks into Dolittle’s animal refuge mansion, which also includes net traps for some reason. The boy is trapped and meets a young girl who also apparently broke into the grounds and who I think is the daughter of Queen Victoria. (I can’t be bothered looking that up.) The two meet Dr Dolittle, a deranged hobo who makes animal noises to communicate with his animal buddies. The movie shows him speaking in English for the majority of scenes, but in the movie’s universe he’s really just making polar bear, dog and monkey noises in front of young children and the Queen of England. Still Robert Downey Jr is the best part of the movie because of his weird British accent and his Jack Sparrow impression.
The main story is that the queen is dying of something and Dolittle and friends need to go somewhere to get the cure for the stupid disease. This takes place about 20 to 30 minutes into the movie and by then I was done, I couldn’t take it anymore! It’s the longest hour and forty minutes of my life! I don’t think I have gone this mad since seeing Cats which was less than a month ago. Similar to Cats these writers presume because this is a kids movie that nothing needs to make sense, which only adds to my insanity. I do get tired of these illogical movies where they even make me go: “ Hang on, you do realise you’re not making a lick of sense? …. “You don’t?…. Okay, let’s move on then, I guess.”
Remember how unfunny James Corden and Rebel Wilson were in Cats? Well make that every scene in the movie and we can share a room in the mental asylum. It’s real bottom of the barrel kiddie garbage. We have a scene of a gorilla kicking a tiger in the non-existent balls. We also have Dolittle help out a sick dragon by having it fart into his face. We can’t have any emotional or tense scene because one of these annoying animal creatures has to squirt out a horrendous quip. I can’t get to know this boring kid because these animals hog all of his screen time. All these animals are voiced by celebrities like Rami Malek, Emma Thompson and John Cena all giving some pretty average voice work. Tom Holland is in this too as Dolittle’s dog and he’s barely in it which felt like a missed opportunity to suck up to Marvel fanboys and, who knows, it might have made the movie better.
I honestly think this is worse than Cats as at least with Cats there is music, some pretty cool sets and it feels like a real movie, not one burped out of a factory. This movie looks flat, the sets and CGI animals look bad and the score sucks!! There isn’t much in here that would ever make me want to watch this schlock again. Even if you had me at gun point, I would happily take the bullet so I never had to lay my eyes on Dolittle again. 1 out of 10 and the new and improved The Blog Complainer’s Epic Fail Seal! I watched this in a cinema full of small children and they ate it up. But to any parents or even kids who haven’t seen Dolittle and are reading this review I hope I have convinced you to watch literally anything else, even Cats!
Hopefully the next lot of movies to come out aren’t as bad because I don’t know if I can take another blow like this. Hope you enjoyed me losing my sanity and until next time I have been The Blog Complainer, signing out.
The Blog Complainer 
“ Burped out of a factory”. Now that is a scene stealer!
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The remake machine continues. Urgh! I think I’ll stick with the original Eddie Murphy movies. Sure, they aren’t cinema paradiso, but at least they were self-aware as comedies. Yeah, I’ll certainly pass.
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