#64 - Doctor Dolittle

Nowadays you can go to a big blockbuster Hollywood movie and there are a number of possibilities of what you could get. You could get a really awesome big budget movie, or you could get an extremely crappy big budget movie. Another thing you could get, and this is important for our discussion, is a movie that has aspirations of being great, and by all means could have, and should have been great, but by misguided planning or a complete misunderstanding of what makes the story great, you end up with an disappointingly bad movie. Wait. Am I talking about Doctor Dolittle here? Yes. Yes I am.

So, what wrong with this movie? It's clear that they put a lot of time and effort in to the project, and the art direction reflects that. The visual design is really well done, but the problem is that its not enough. This movie was two and a half hours of mostly boring, underwhelming, and misguided film making. You see, this is a story that is suppossed to be whimsical and magical, but it is rarely any of the two. We have a man that can talk to animals, relate to animals, and sympathize with animals, but he can't relate with human beings. Thats called quirky. Really quirky. But there was nothing quirky about Rex Harrison performance at all. In fact, I don't think his performance was really that good, or at least he was given much to work with. He's stiff, he's kind of flat, he's kind of boring, and worst of all, he barely sings any of his songs. He's the title character and most of his songs are in that rythmic speaking style that isn't singing, but isn't talking. It's a freaking musical, let's act like it. The major problem with this is that most of his songs sound the same, therefore lending to the boring nature of the movie.

I submit two movies, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Both of these movies have a magical world that is part of the real world around us, but essentially is unknown or unseen. As the movies unfold there is a revelation about these worlds that is filled with imagination and wonder. This is what Doctor Dolittle should have done, and it does not. The end of the movie has the guy flying on a a large lunar moth. To which I said, "Wow, thats a great shot", and "Nice to get a lunar moth harness on short notice". The scene when he talks to the whale is great. They are on a island that floats around in the ocean. This is all magical stuff, but it came after too many minutes of boredom. Its as if they spent all of their money trying to make an enormous spectacle and they forgot the essence of the story. I will say this, there are some songs that are well written, well sung, and would have been perfect in the type of movie this should have been. They were all sung by Anthony Newly.

And now, the worst part of the movie. Usually the sign that you are watching a bad movie happens towards the beginning. It let's you know that you are in for a bumpy ride. Well, this movie waited until the very end to show you. You see, the main objective for Doctor Dolittle in this movie is to find the Great Pink Sea Snail. It's a huge mythical pink snail and he goes through numerous adventures to find it. You knew he was going to because it's that type of story. The thing is that when it showed up, IT WASN'T PINK!!!! It was GREEN AND TAN!! The funny thing about it is that throughout the whole thing they used the word "pink", but as soon as the thing showed up, that word dissapeared from their vocabulary. Oh well, we can't all be geniuses with our millions.