Review of Dr. Dolittle 3 (2006) by Alex M — 25 Feb 2008

REVIEW - Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief aka Dr Dolittle 4(not dr dolittle 3 - soz).

Let's just start by saying THIS FILM IS AMAZING!!!!! If the Oscar hype has got you itching to see No Country for Old Men, forget it! This film is a million times better than anything that has ever won an Oscar!

Premise:

Maya Dolittle(Kyla Pratt - Dr. Dolittle 1, 2 and 3) unites the governments of the United States and Calumbour by training a small dog to be socially well behaved, while also ratting out a corrupt vice president.

Review:

Released in America straight to DVD, director Craig Shapiros'(Breakfast with Einstein) exceptional take on post-millennial American ordinary people that can talk to animals is simultaneously achingly funny and bitingly moving. It also presents she-who-can-do-no-wrong, Kyla Pratt, with the kind of richly-textured, grandstanding centrepiece that she just devours, rocking the screen with scintillating comic timing while instilling the film with an understated sadness that beautifully expresses its magical but troubled heart. It should be a career defining role, but for Pratt it's another in a canon of 'career bests'. Still, when you consider she is surrounded by brilliant turns from Peter Coyote, Niall Matter, Malcolm Stewart and Greg Ellis (as Bruce the Wallaby) , you start to see how much more this is than just a sophisticate's soap opera.

Curiously furrowing similar turf to the more testosterone-heavy Beethoven, Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief is about female empowerment and self-discovery, with young-life as coma where the only answer is a Zen-themed search for 'animals make you happy'. Both films share super-charged dogs-eat-peoples-food sequences and quasi-profound diatribes against household goods. Where Dolittle surpasses the St Bernard battery pack, however, is in its devotion to humanity and, ultimately, animal-love as the prizes so frustratingly out of reach.

Kathleen Laccinole's cynically-charged script plants this dysfunctional satire in a community so off-balance it is borderline David Lynch weirdo-Americana. It also strays away from cliche by throwing a corrupt vice-president and a career-mad-bitch into the mix.

Unusual for such animal-focused comedy-drama is the vivid visual style. In among Dolittles's human reawakening are dreamy visions of Animals 'n' shit. Shapiros also paints his affluent Everywhereville with a worndown quality, all saturated colours and blank walls, throwing in outlandish angles to evoke the skewed normality of these fractured lives. an oddball animal with an identity crisis, plays foil to the films chief baddie(the Vice-President) surely this is a comment on the Bush administration?

With old favourite the drunken-Monkey and Lucky The Dog (voiced by the original actors) and a great ending in which Miss Dolittle is aided in bring down the vice-president and thereby uniting the Presidents of America and Calumbour respectfully, brings this film full circle.

5 stars then.

An incisive, deliriously funny and profound vision of talking animals. Thankgod a fourth Sequel - Dr Dolittle Goin' Hollywood is due later this year.