j* movie reviews 2020

Dolittle (2020)

This certainly does little for my childhood fandom.

I'm one of the biggest remake/redo/rework optimists there is. And I hate to be "the book was better" nerd, partly because I hardly read the books. But I read these books as an animal obsessed child. This is truly an abomination.

I shall justify this with just one item. If you are going to do what you will with the existing cannon (which is fine!) to include a new wife character (which is fine) then don't kill her off in the opening sequence as some kind of man-motivation (absolutely 100% not fine). OMG I am truly ropable. Why do film Dolittle's need wives? Is it because their passion for animals can be read as going a little too far? Do they need a wife to keep the audience from pondering beastiality? This was never a problem in the books. Anyway, this set the film off on the wrong wooden duck foot right from the get go.

The biggest problem though, isn't this, nor is it Robert Downey Jnr attempting a Welsh accent. There is one second when he puts on the right hat, but that's not it either. The biggest problem is this film is meant to life or die on its talking animal characters. And for a lot of the time it just doesn't feel like those voices are coming out of those animals. I don't know exactly how to explain it. Perhaps there's a touch of the Lion King (2019) here, where the animals are that bit too realistic to carry off the wildness? And the voices of the animals are fairly well developed with characters, but then, for a lot of them, the animals themselves just don't seem to match those characters.

It's a mess. It feels like you're on a paintball battleground with a thousand different bullets of all different colours coming at you for the whole film.

J* gives it 1 star.

PS. Though the alt-title may be "The Voyage of..." do not, I repeat do not expect the great glass sea-snail. This will only add layers to already palpable disappointment.