Dolit­tle

What is it about Dolit­tle, Stephen Gaghan’s vehi­cle for the good doc­tor capa­ble of con­vers­ing with ani­mals, that com­pelled Robert Downey Jr to take his first non-Iron Man role in six years? The obvi­ous answer would be ​“mon­ey,” but sure­ly no short­age of hand­some­ly-paid offers have crossed his desk over the years, mean­ing that there must be some­thing spe­cial about this one.

This is the beguil­ing mys­tery a view­er turns over while wait­ing for Dolittle’s excru­ci­at­ing­ly long 102 min­utes to pass, a more engag­ing men­tal occu­pa­tion than the dirge of man­u­fac­tured sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and excru­ci­at­ing unfun­ni­ness onscreen.

Per­haps some­thing about the incon­gru­ous, mature new back­sto­ry assigned to the lit­er­ary icon – his wife died at sea, lead­ing him to cut him­self off from the world until his four-legged friends teach him how to love again – lured Downey to the gig. It’s pos­si­ble that he want­ed to give his sev­en- and five-year-old chil­dren some­thing they could enjoy as a fam­i­ly. Or maybe he just real­ly, real­ly want­ed to pull a bag­pipe out of a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed dragon’s impact­ed anus.

That’s the most mem­o­rable scene in a film oth­er­wise defined by its lack there­of, a work com­plete­ly bereft of the warmth and wit that made the Rex Har­ri­son pic­tures a delight and the Eddie Mur­phy iter­a­tion most­ly agree­able. As a unit of nar­ra­tive, it sim­ply does not cohere; the script forces Dolit­tle into the mould of a der­ring-do adven­tur­er instead of an eccen­tric vet­eri­nar­i­an, and the mis­sion he under­takes (some mum­bo-jum­bo to do with a poi­soned princess) has zero sense of stakes for us or for him. When he final­ly retrieves the mag­ic fruit that cures comas or what­ev­er, it comes as an insis­tent reminder that this all was not, tech­ni­cal­ly, pointless.

The menagerie of mouthy mam­mals should pro­vide the diver­sion that’s always been this property’s real main event, but Noah him­self would’ve kicked these wretched beasts off the Ark. There’s the bas­ket case goril­la Chee-Chee (voiced by Rami Malek), who defi­ant­ly declares ​“I’m not a pris­on­er of fear!” dur­ing a live­ly fight scene. After over­com­ing a chal­lenge through the pow­er of friend­ship, the upbeat drag­on­fly James (Jason Mant­zoukas) cheers, ​“Team­work makes the dream work!”

The film’s con­cept of com­e­dy nev­er exceeds mid-’90s zingers like ​“that’s got to hurt,” or Rush Hour ref­er­ences lost on the intend­ed audi­ence. In the lone excep­tion, Octavia Spencer voic­es a duck named Dab-Dab who can­not tell stalk veg­eta­bles apart from med­ical equip­ment. It is a pass­ably humor­ous bit. At one point, she announces her arrival by cry­ing ​“Dabs is here!” and if only for a moment, the dis­plea­sure of this view­ing expe­ri­ence is dulled.

That pro­vides but a brief reprieve from a long, intense bout of tedi­um bound to seed resent­ment for their chil­dren in even the most accom­mo­dat­ing, patient par­ents. Insid­er reports marred the release of Gaghan’s lat­est with accounts of exten­sive reshoots and tin­ker­ing at the exec­u­tive lev­el, and while the qual­i­ty of hav­ing been messed with is indeed pal­pa­ble, one still can’t quite per­ceive the movie every­one involved thought they were mak­ing. A gar­bled noth­ing, it fails even in the prop­er exe­cu­tion of its own bad ideas.

For Downey Jr, this is all prob­a­bly in good fun. He shows up to set on time, pre­tends a ten­nis ball on a stick is a squir­rel, cash­es his cheque, takes the kids out on one of pre­sum­ably sev­er­al boats. As for the rest of us, we actu­al­ly have to watch this cin­e­mat­ic fart, a break­age of artis­tic wind more eye-water­ing­ly pun­gent than the gust of intesti­nal air loosed into Dr Dolittle’s face as he strug­gles to relieve the afore­men­tioned dragon’s rectum.