I was not really aware about the existence of this movie till few weeks ago when its trailer started to be shown prior to the start of other films. I might have seen the tittle somewhere before, but did not have any memory of it. Anyway when my wife and I saw that the main star was one of her favorite actors, we were immediately intrigued and lucky enough could see the movie during its premier date last night. And how was the movie? I'll get into it now.
Brief Story Line
After a personal incident, Dr. John Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr - Iron Man trilogy, The Judge etc), famous for being a veterinarian who could talk to animals was not keen to interact with other people and only play around all day long with his animal friends such as Poly the very firm macaw bird (Emma Thompson - Last Christmas, Sense and Sensibility etc), Chee-Chee the always nervous gorilla (Rami Malek - Bohemian Rhapsody, Need for Speed etc), Yoshi the polar bear (John Cena - Playing with Fire, Ferdinand etc), Plimpton the ostrich (Kumail Nanjiani - Stuber, The Lego Ninjago Movie etc), Dab-dab the duck (Octavia Spencer - Instant Family, Hidden Figures etc) and few others.
But when one day the queen fell sick, Dolittle was asked to find out ways to cure her. Reluctantly he embarked on a journey to find the cure together with all the animals and a young boy who wanted to be his apprentice named Stubbins (Harry Collet). However, another doctor named Blair Müdfly (Michael Sheen - Passengers, Master of Sex TV series etc) did not want Dolittle to succeed and tried to sabotage his voyage.
So how would the story conclude? Find them all in this fun and light fantasy adventure movie for all ages.
End of Brief Story Line
Well that was a bit unexpected. At first I thought the movie would be serious especially with how it started plus the trailer that did not reveal too much information and seemed to be more like drama. However, after we were shown the animals who could communicate with Dolittle, I immediately felt the opposite. I found the film to be full of comedy that arouse from the funny remarks made by the various animal characters. During many scenes, my wife and I and lots of the audience could laugh out loud on the sometimes absurd behavior of these animals.
I really admire the voice cast who consisted of so many major stars with multiple awards and nominations among them as they were very lively and managed to bring life to these animal characters. My personal favorite was definitely the gorilla Chee-Chee (whose voice I did not realized by Rami Malek). Aside from all the fantastic cast mentioned above, there were also the brief appearance of well known names like Ralph Fiennes with his real charismatic voice as Barry the tiger, or Tom Holland as Jip the dog, Selena Gomez as Betsy the giraffe, Marion Cotilard as Tutu the fox and even Antonio Banderas as King Rassouli.
The great animal characterization were also made possible due to the amazing special effects. This film which was distributed by Universal studios had a huge budget, no doubt to support these effects (although it might not be as spectacular as another studio's beautifully animated live version movie about a lion). The special effects team were really a lot as could be seen during the very long end credit scene which did not have any post scene but had a brief mid end credit scene. Some of the better effects could be seen during the voyage in the sea.
Talking about the story, it was adapted from one of the Doolittle book series, titled The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle. However, I could not help feel that the movie seemed to be aimed for younger audience. And to be honest, despite the great performances from the cast, there seemed to be something missing emotionally. There was no touching scene that affected me or my wife at all. The adventure did not feel that great and I felt it just passed by. I was more keen to see what crazy things the animals would do again.
Btw, this film was supposed to be a reboot of the previous Dr Dolittle movies (starring Eddie Murphy) which I thought were good and fun, but I could not really remember whether I enjoyed them a lot or just averagely. Hence I could not give a comparison between these movies now, unless I rewatch those earlier films. Nevertheless, I am very sure that the special effects on this 2020 version is a lot better. From the poor critics review, sadly I doubt this movie will be successful commercially and it would make it harder to have further sequels.
So if your aim is to look for visually entertaining movie filled with humors provided by the wonderful voice cast of the animals, then this would be satisfying for you (just like it did to me and my wife). But if you want to see something more serious with great adventure and wonderful story that you would normally get from other studios' movies, then this might not be to your liking. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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