Doolittle

When I first saw a trailer for Doolittle, I saw what looked like a hilarious action-packed adventure feature the acting talents of the amazing Robert Downey Jr. and a great cast of voices. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that was more misrepresented by its trailer than this one. Doolittle is directed and written by Stephen Gaghan, who has written and directed before, but nothing that I’ve ever seen. I’d love to say that this is the movie that is going to thrust him onto the national scene, and it may be true, but if only for all the wrong reasons.

After the credits of Avengers: Endgame rolled, Robert Downey Jr. was suddenly freer than he had been in over a decade. He was free to choose whatever project he wanted to do in a market that surely had no lack of demand for his acting services and recognizable style. This leads me to ask the question of “Why?”. With the freedom to do anything he so chose, why in his right mind would RDJ choose Doolittle. Let’s talk a little bit about why this movie was such a waste of his talents.

First of all, what was going on with that RDJ accent? Is he French? Is he English? He is supposed to be from Victorian England but that is not the voice he is doing. Furthermore, there is literally no direction in this movie. It is literally a connection of poorly written scenes that make no sense and don’t connect you to any of the characters.

You pretty much start the movie off with this random kid who separates from his dad and brother and ends up at Doolittle’s mansion at the same time that a little 13ish-year-old girl with a terrible English accent has come from Buckingham Palace to summon the doctor. This little girl’s character is completely pointless. Why does the Queen send a dainty little girl? The movie pretty much tries to forces some like childhood romantic connection between the girl and the other kid named Stubbins who ends up going with Doolittle on his journey. You meet the villains pretty early on and it is immediately obvious that they are behind everything, even before they reveal themselves to the audience.

Doolittle has a great voice cast! The problem is you don’t really recognize any of them unless you look at the cast list. It seems like all of the voice actors are changing their voice a little for the character except for Emma Thompson. I didn’t even realize Tom Holland, John Cena, and Rami Malek were in the movie until I started writing this article!

When it all comes down to it, most of the issues with this movie stem from the horrendous writing that repeatedly had me asking the same question to myself of “What am I watching?”. Nothing made sense, nothing was compelling, and what resulted is a movie that should never have been made. I will say that I laughed a lot while watching Doolittle. However, I was definitely laughing AT how incredibly bad this movie is more than actually laughing WITH the terrible attempts at comedy.

The Rating

To be honest, I don’t really know what else to say about this film so I’m just going to go ahead and wrap it up as to not spend any more unnecessary time pondering its existence. This movie felt like it was written by a 12-year-old. That being said, a 12-year-old might thoroughly enjoy the movie, but anyone older than that is likely to feel the same way I felt. Doolittle is one of the worst movies I have ever gone to see in theaters and is by far the worst performance of Robert Downey’s that I have ever seen. This movie is not worth your time. I watch terrible movies sometimes so that you do not have to.

3/10

 

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