Every so often, a film comes along that is so terrible, that you actually find it offensive. Well, we’ve got another one! If Satan himself asked for a film he could use to torture his subjects, he would have deemed that Dolittle was too much, even for Hell.
I don’t even know where to begin, this film is just a complete mess. You would think that with a star-studded cast, there would at least be some redeeming qualities, but not even a vast array of talent can save this complete train wreck from quite literally making your head hurt from the weight of it’s stupidity.
Right off the back of one of the finest performances of the year in 2019, Robert Downey Jr delivers one of the worst acting performances I’ve ever seen as the titular character. I’m still trying to work out what accent he was trying to do, I think it was Welsh? But it was so awful it was beyond distracting and every scene he’s in was painful, as I tried my best not to laugh at the atrocity that was his performance. It baffles me that not a single person working on this film didn’t take a step back and just say: “Yeah, this isn’t really working, let’s tweak the accent to something more… human.”
The plot is… basic? Boring? It’s an “epic quest” that doesn’t feel epic at all. In fact, it’s a slog to get there and the payoff really isn’t worth it at all. The climax of this film is so painfully bad I can only assume the scriptwriters were blind drunk when they wrote it, or it was intended to be a joke and it somehow passed through and made it into the film by accident. I don’t know how, but again, I can’t believe someone signed off on this. I won’t spoil it in case any of you want to go and see it for some crazy reason. (Don’t see it, save your money.) But I can tell you it is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen that resorts to the very worst tropes of storytelling and “humour”.
Even writing about this film is making my head hurt. It’s just insanely awful and there are pretty much no redeeming qualities at all, Michael Sheen does alright with what he had, I guess?
Children will probably find it mildly entertaining? But even children deserve better than this. I just get the vibe that everyone involved in this film was phoning it in and really didn’t give a crap about the final result, that’s the only logical explanation.
Dolittle is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It’s only getting a score this high because it made me laugh once or twice. But for the record, I was laughing at how bad it was… Not because it was funny.
Avoid like the plague, if you have any self-respect.
I give Dolittle a 2/10.
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