Dolittle (2020)
Directed by Stephen Gaghan
After losing his wife seven years earlier, the eccentric Dr. John Dolittle, famed doctor and veterinarian of Queen Victoria’s England, hermits himself away behind the high walls of Dolittle Manor with only his menagerie of exotic animals for company. But when the young queen falls gravely ill, a reluctant Dolittle is forced to set sail on an epic adventure to a mythical island in search of a cure, regaining his wit and courage as he crosses old adversaries and discovers wondrous creatures.
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It reminds me of George Miller, who went from creating the post-apocalyptic Mad Max series to pulling a filmmaking 180 degrees when he co-wrote another talking animal movie, Babe .
Talking animals work much better if you slow things down like “Babe” (1995) or dub voices over real animals like “Homeward Bound” (1993).
As the Joker’s girlfriend (before his recent remodelling), Harley Quinn was the brightest thing in the 2016 comic-book movie Suicide Squad, and Margot Robbie, who played her, isn’t about to let go.
Whatever the reason, there hasn’t been a movie this big that seemed this frantically and awkwardly cobbled together from footage originally conceived in a totally different way since Suicide Squad.
It all plays like highlights from other, better pictures like Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl , Paddington , The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and any of the first few, more kid-friendly Harry Potter movies.
The story is pretty thin, and some more nuance would have been welcome (even The Adventures of Tintin had some neat thematic ideas to go along with the spectacle), but there’s a watchable fantasy adventure here.
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Harry Collett’s Tommy is a young hunter who can’t kill, which was done better in “Jojo Rabbit” (2019), while Carmel Laniado’s Lady Rose is sidelined waiting at the queen’s bedside.