Review of Dolittle (2020) by Theredsky — 25 Jan 2020

Dolittle is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite film of 2020. Dolittle shows that having a talented cast but giving them nothing to work with can have disastrous effects. I think Robert Downey Jr.

is a great actor but what was he thinking with this movie. In fact, what was any of the actors thinking when they signed on. Most of these actors are Oscar nominees or Oscar winners and they choose to do this.

All of their performances are terrible especially Downey which really sucks. He has just a smidge of charm but it’s overshadowed by his terrible accent and dialogue. He puts on this Welsh accent and you can hardly make out a word he is saying.

The script only makes his awkward accent even worse. The dialogue is very unnatural and awkward and doesn’t allow for jokes to be clever but instead forced. The humor for this film is awful. It all comes down to fart jokes and getting hit in the groin jokes.

It’s incredibly unfunny and really took me out of the film. What really made me change my score was a joke involving a Dragon and a release of gas. I completely gave up on the film at that point. All of the other characters present are dull and obnoxious.

The characters don’t get developed at all. They have one flaw/character trait that defines them. They have character arcs but they are all resolved in one or two scenes. The visual effects aren’t terrible but they aren’t that great.

In some scenes, they look fine but in others they look pretty bad. The film is all around lifeless and boring. The only reason I can think of to Universal Pictures making this movie was to keep the license to the Dr.

Dolittle property. I was bored out of my mind while watching this. The characters were unappealing so I wasn’t interested when any of them appeared on screen. The only time I wasn’t bored was the animation segment in the beginning of the film which looks nice but the voice over dialogue was terrible.

At certain points in the film, a character will be saying something on screen but the dialogue would be completely different. It was incredibly obnoxious and distracting. Overall, Dolittle takes an impressive cast and completely wastes them on a soulless, boring, unfunny, and unappealing film.