First appearing in a series of kids’ books by author Hugh Lofting, John Dolittle is a pet doc who can speak to and understand pretty much any animal. This latest iteration of the oft-adapted character serves as the first post-MCU gig for Robert Downey Jr, sporting a warped Welsh accent.
As the story opens, Dolittle is mourning the death of his wife (and playing chess with a gorilla). He’s roused from his grief-stricken sabbatical by a couple of plucky kids who sneak into his compound and convince him to save Queen Victoria (played by Wild Rose’s Jessie Buckley), who is currently languishing in a coma, the possible victim of poisoning.
You may ask yourself why a veterinarian has been tasked with such a burden. There is no answer, but there is a quest: Dolittle must find some magical fruit in order to revive the Queen, so off he goes with a variety of animals (cowardly ape, shivering Polar bear, wisecracking ostrich) to not only save the monarch but ultimately his soul.
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This all sounds good, but between Downey's asthmatic Tom Jones impression, a script that relentlessly bombards the viewer with anachronistic pop-culture references, and contemporary slang (a squid says "Snitches get stitches"), plus a largely unstructured story that ping-pongs from one adventure to the next with little focus or cohesion, we’re left with a bizarre, extravagant, slapsticky mess.
Lacking the real-life movie magic of the 1967 original, or the warmth of Eddie Murphy's ’90s reboot, this cynical reimagining is as lifeless and dead-eyed as it's digitally rendered animals. Despite a director of note (Syriana’s Stephen Gaghan) and stellar voice cast (Tom Holland, Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, Octavia Spencer) Dolittle 2020 does little we haven’t seen before.
