Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Dolittle 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 21, 2020

The story of Dr. Dolittle -- the man who can speak to animals -- has now been a part of popular culture for a century. Hugh Lofting's first published story to feature the character released in 1920, and he's been portrayed by screen greats like Rex Harrison and Eddie Murphy over the years. Add Robert Downey, Jr. to the list. The actor who will forever be immortalized as Iron Man leaves behind the mask and the Marvel Cinematic Universe for talking animals and farting dragons. But talk is cheap, as they say, and so too is this movie, not so much in financial cost but in finished product quality. Dolittle rings hollow, tightrope walking that fine line between crudely entertaining and completely disastrous. The movie finds a few moments of fun but it's otherwise a curiosity of missed opportunity and a cesspool of incessantly bad jokes and flat adventure that the filmmakers hope to mask with an endless array of digital wizardry.

Famed veterinarian Dr. John Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr.), a man gifted with the ability to speak with animals, was once given a “wondrous sanctuary” for his efforts, a place where all animals were welcome and safe. He loved his animals, but his heart belonged to a human woman named Lilly (Kasia Smutniak) who, one day, tragically perished at sea. Dolittle retreated from the world, closing himself off from everyone and everything except for some of his animals. The recluse continues to mourn until a young boy named Tommy (Harry Collett) and the young Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado) both arrive on his doorstep with different needs: Tommy brings an injured squirrel he hopes Dolittle can save and Lady Rose shares an urgent message from Buckingham Palace palace that Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley) has fallen ill and has requested Dolittle’s aid. Dolittle springs into action once again and finds himself on a quest to find a magical medicine. But the adventure will force Dolittle to confront his dark past once again and make use of all of his medical and linguistic know-how if he’s to come out of the adventure alive and with the critical supplies needed to save Victoria’s life.

Now seems to be the time to bring the Dolittle story to the screen, not necessarily because there's some demand for the character's return to popular culture but because movie technology now makes it possible for actors to interact with anything and everything imaginable, seamlessly. Everything from talking polar bears to fully controlled walking sticks are now fair game, and to its credit Dolittle does wonders with its digital nonhuman characters that populate the film in abundance and fit into the world with impressive seamlessness, with the fluidity and grace and realism required of the material. But while the visual effects are quite good, the filmmakers have forgotten that there are other elements necessary in a good modern film, like plot and heart. The story is jumbled and unfunny, a period piece built around exaggerated emphasis on production, its shortcomings exacerbated by a reliance on those same overextended components. The film offers little reason to emotionally invest in it. To its credit it avoids a few cliché components that were surprisingly left out of the script, but the whole is nevertheless devoid of draw. Disinterest will run high, and quickly, as the story flounders and the film can't come up with any compelling reason to care about the characters or the world in which they operate.

Downey is as good a choice as any to play the lead role. He's obviously more than familiar with working in and around heavily digitized productions, but even an actor of his caliber cannot help but by stymied by the suboptimal script, and it appears he grows as weary with the material as the audience, never quite finding that jolt, that character charisma to pull the audience squarely behind him. His accent is terrible to boot, and his supporting cast can't get off the ground, either, largely because the characters are too flat to get any lift underneath. Only Antonio Banderas manages to shine, soaking up the opportunity to play a pirate with a vendetta against Dolittle, a man to whom he has a very personal connection. Even then, by the time the movie gets around to his character, too much damage has been done to really care outside of a few choice moments.

Dolittle 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc.

Dolittle's 2160p/Dolby Vision UHD video presentation does much for the movie's visual vitality. Colors are dramatic and expressive with natural greens in the opening minutes eye-opening for color stretch, depth, and dramatic shading. Foliage leaps off the screen, green grass is breathtakingly crisp, and tones that dot the landscape enjoy the sort of tonal intensity one can only dream of. The palette proves its value throughout, in fact, with everything from dark animal fur to earthen support tones enjoying the sort richness reserved for the finest transfers. Add in exceptionally beautiful whites, deeply enveloping and detailed blacks, and perfectly shaded skin tones and the Dolby Vision color grading yields one of the best palettes on the UHD format yet. Textural improvements are also quite strong over the Blu-ray. The movie is razor-sharp front to back, with both natural and manmade elements the beneficiaries of remarkable clarity and exquisite attention to detail. The image is very filmic despite its digital origins (reportedly photographed at 8K and finished at 2K). Skin tones are endlessly clear and ceaselessly revealing, garments show every stitch and fray, and even digital constructs are tangibly realistic. Noise management is superior to the Blu-ray and there are no problematic source or encode issues of note. Dolittle looks tremendous under the UHD specification.

Dolittle 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dolittle's Dolby Atmos soundtrack delivers impressive technical results but offers nothing above and beyond. Much of the movie is dialogue intensive and there no problems there for positioning, prioritization, or detail. Music enjoys robust space across all planes and impressive engagement at the low end. Out at sea mid-movie, creaking woods, splashing waters, blowing winds, and a storm in chapter 11 -- which is only heard briefly -- do much to draw the listener into the location, much more than the story to be sure. Chapter 14 is home to some dynamic action that sees cannonballs flying through the stage, explosions sending good depth and hurtling debris through the listening area, and other examples of intensive chaos, all of which blend together in frenzied harmony but at the same time offer enough in the way of clarity excellence and discrete placement to follow individual sounds. The most surround intensive, fluid, and dynamic stretch comes in chapter 16 during an action scene comprised of various sound elements involving chaos in a cavern. Like a couple of chapters before it, everything is in good working order. This is a solid, agreeable track, just not one for the record books.

Dolittle 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Dolittle's UHD includes six featurettes. A Blu-ray copy of the film and a Movies Anywhere digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with an embossed slipcover.

• Talk to the Animals (2160p/SDR, 5:05): Downey, Jr. introduces some of the characters and the actors who voice them.
• RDJ & Harry: Mentor and Mentee (2160p/SDR, 3:30): The on- and off-screen relationship between the actors and their characters.
• Becoming the Good Doctor (2160p/SDR, 2:54): A more thorough, but still quick, exploration of Downey, Jr.'s character and performance as well as the qualities that drew him to the project.
• Antonio Banderas: Pirate King (2160p/SDR, 2:59): Like the previous supplement, a focus on Banderas' character, performance, and the world in which the character operates.
• The Wicked Dr. Müdfly (2160p/SDR, 2:00): Exploring Michael Sheen's character and on-screen work.
• A Most Unusual House (2160p/SDR, 3:58): Looking at the construction and furnishing of one of the film's primary set pieces.

Dolittle 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Dolittle's story drags, the laughs are flat, the adventure isn't engaging, and the story is not at all captivating. At its absolute best it's passable entertainment, the sort of movie that might work well for the easily amused or as a diversion in trying times when any reprieve from reality might be welcome, as is currently the case. And, as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures. Worth a look to keep the family, and the little ones in particular, smiling for 100-some minutes. The UHD is of first-rate quality and includes a handful of modest extras, so the technical package is everything it should be.