406. Doctor Dolittle (1998)

Starring: Eddie Murphy, Peter Boyle, Ossie Davis

Director: Betty Thomas

Running Time: 85 mins

Doctor Dolittle is an American film about a man who rediscovers his childhood ability to talk to animals. After word gets out in the animal community that there’s a doctor who can help all the animals, they all flock to him for help.

Animals talking in films is annoying. Simple. The thing was with this film, though, it was the extremely irritating idea of a person trying to talk with these animals, coupled with a horribly cheesy story and relatively poor comedy.

Firstly, this film had some very annoying characters. Although mainly on the side of the animals, there were quite a few extremely irritating humans, so in the end I felt no interest whatsoever in what happened in the story to these characters, because I frankly didn’t want anything good to come of them.

Plus, they made this film way too adult for its main audience: children. The whole concept is extremely juvenile, but appealing to kids, however some themes in it, mainly the suicidal tiger, were surely not appropriate for the 5-7 year old audience, and if you’re any age but that, the film isn’t entertaining at all, so it’s barely acceptable for anyone to watch.

The story was ultimately completely predictable, and although I don’t mind that, the fact that I laughed only once or twice throughout this film means it didn’t achieve anything in the form of entertainment, so that’s why it gets a 5.4.