Entertainment

BRIAN VINER reviews the new big screen version of Dolittle 


Dolittle (PG) 

Rating:

Verdict: A talking, squawking mess

Mr. Jones (15)

Rating:

Verdict: Overlong but powerful

The very name Dolittle evokes different images for different people. Some might think of Hugh Lofting’s books about the Victorian doctor who could converse with animals.

Others recall Rex Harrison and his pushmi-pullyu in the 1967 musical adaptation, or Eddie Murphy goofing about in the 1998 and 2001 versions.

Well, now here’s Robert Downey Jr to give the name a whole new resonance, as in ‘Dolittle business at the box office’. Rather like the original picture, it seems destined to be a catastrophic commercial flop.

Robert Downey plays Dr John Dolittle as a 19th-century Welshman, and you would think, judging by the shrieking criticism of his accent, that he deserves to be flogged all round the Valleys with leeks and daffodils

Robert Downey plays Dr John Dolittle as a 19th-century Welshman, and you would think, judging by the shrieking criticism of his accent, that he deserves to be flogged all round the Valleys with leeks and daffodils

In fairness to 1967’s Doctor Dolittle, despite the fact that it almost bankrupted 20th Century Fox, it was an amiable enough film, and these days has a certain dated charm.

This version has as much charm as a sheep has A-levels. In fact, its lack of charm almost counts as an achievement, given a cast led by Downey, with Jim Broadbent and Antonio Banderas in supporting roles.

Emma Thompson and Ralph Fiennes also lend their voices. With all that talent, and a production budget estimated at $175 million, it has to work hard to fail.

Downey plays Dr John Dolittle as a 19th-century Welshman, and you would think, judging by the shrieking criticism of his accent, that he deserves to be flogged all round the Valleys with leeks and daffodils.

In truth, it’s not that bad. Yes, there are times when it seems to meander from Cardiff to California and back again by way of Calcutta. And yes, he only seems to be able to deliver his Welsh vowels in a kind of mutter, which at times appears to have been badly dubbed.

But the problem with his performance is not the voice — it’s the complete absence, for want of a better word, of oomph. Downey is generally an actor with a rather challenging excess of oomph, so where it’s gone, who can say? Perhaps a camel ate it.

We first meet him as a recluse, hiding behind a huge, unkempt beard and mourning his lovely wife, who has died in a storm at sea. His rambling manor house in the English countryside is a sanctuary for animals, with whom he spends his days communing. He plays chess with a gorilla (voiced by Rami Malek) — that sort of thing.

Then comes an unwelcome human intrusion, with the arrival of a boy called Tommy Stubbins (Harry Collett). Tommy needs Dolittle’s help, having accidentally shot a squirrel called Kevin (giving incongruous names to animals is one of the more desperate ways in which this film tries to elicit laughs; Fiennes voices a tiger named Barry).

Coincidentally, it’s not just Tommy who needs Dolittle’s help, but also the ailing young Queen Victoria (a bizarre waste of the extravagantly gifted Jessie Buckley, who spends most of the movie in bed, quietly dying).

The Queen has sent one of her ladies-in-waiting, Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado), to summon Dolittle to Buckingham Palace.

Encouraged to go by his pushy parrot Polynesia (Thompson), who also acts as narrator, he decides that she has been poisoned, quite possibly by her dastardly doctor, Blair Mudfly (Michael Sheen in full pantomime villain mode), or a creepy courtier (Broadbent). Or both.

Dolittle realises that the only known antidote to the poison is the fruit of the Eden tree, which grows in a far-away land.

The incentive is not just seeing his sovereign restored to health, but also the safeguarding of Dolittle Manor, so off he sets with his protege Tommy and lots of talking animals on a perilous sea voyage. He leaves a stick insect in the royal bedchamber as a spy.

And so to Mr. Jones, a very different affair. Illustrious Polish director Agnieszka Holland¿s film tells the true story of Gareth Jones (James Norton pictured), the Welsh journalist who broke the shocking story of genocide in the Ukraine in the early 1930s

And so to Mr. Jones, a very different affair. Illustrious Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s film tells the true story of Gareth Jones (James Norton pictured), the Welsh journalist who broke the shocking story of genocide in the Ukraine in the early 1930s

Now, this might sound like fun, and perhaps it could have been. But, as I say, it’s an oddly charmless affair, full of quips that fall with resounding thuds, and laboured slapstick.

I don’t just speak for myself, but also for the large audience of under-tens with whom I first saw Dolittle, at a lavish London preview, in the company of the cast.

Children might by definition be young, but they’re not stupid. Most of them weren’t even foxed by the high-quality technical wizardry into thinking any of this was much good.

Anyway, having eventually escaped the malevolent attentions of the pursuing Mudfly, an angry king (Banderas), and Barry the tiger, Dolittle, Tommy and their menagerie make it to the land of the Eden tree. It is guarded by a fierce dragon (Frances de la Tour) with a troublesome colonic blockage. Dolittle helps her out by removing a set of bagpipes from her fundament.

Alas, there is no such easy remedy for Stephen Gaghan’s decidedly blocked-up film. Mind you, de la Tour can at least now brandish a CV unlike anybody else’s…a constipated and flatulent dragon to go with a memorable Cleopatra at Stratford, and Rising Damp’s Miss Jones. 

And so to Mr. Jones, a very different affair. Illustrious Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s film tells the true story of Gareth Jones (James Norton), the Welsh journalist who broke the shocking story of genocide in the Ukraine in the early 1930s. This was engineered by Stalin through widespread famine.

foreign Press corps members in Moscow, led by The New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty (Peter Sarsgaard), were mostly a complacent bunch, enjoying a decadent lifestyle and barely questioning Soviet lies. But then Jones inveigled his way to the Ukraine, seeing and indeed suffering the famine first-hand.

It’s an earnest, overlong film, but stirring and powerful, and it deserves to be seen.

Kenneth Cranham, as David Lloyd George, and Vanessa Kirby, as another Moscow reporter, lend solid support. Joseph Mawle intermittently pops up as George Orwell — who, by some accounts, was so influenced by the story Jones brought home that he gave his name to the deposed proprietor of Animal Farm.

Razor-sharp, gruesome and unmissable 

Parasite (15)

Verdict:  Satire of the year

Rating:

The South Korean masterpiece Parasite is not the first foreign-language film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. But it would be the first to win — and it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that, on Sunday, it will.

Director Bong Joon-ho already has the Cannes Film Festival’s coveted Palme d’Or to show for what is undoubtedly one of the finest films, in any language, of the past 12 months.

Parasite is a story of complacent, spoilt haves and sly, guileful have-nots. The Kim family — mother, father, grown-up son and daughter — live on the breadline in a squalid basement, folding pizza boxes to, as it were, earn a crust.

Director Bong Joon-ho (pictured at Golden Globe Awards) already has the Cannes Film Festival¿s coveted Palme d¿Or to show for what is undoubtedly one of the finest films

Director Bong Joon-ho (pictured at Golden Globe Awards) already has the Cannes Film Festival’s coveted Palme d’Or to show for what is undoubtedly one of the finest films

Then the son is offered a job as an English tutor to the teenage daughter of an extremely wealthy family, who live in sleek, modern luxury. His sister has to fake his qualifications.

Once the rich family has accepted him, he persuades them that their unruly little boy could do with an art teacher. Soon, his sister has a job, followed, after some unscrupulous jiggery-pokery, by their mother and father, without their employers knowing any of them are related.

But before the Kims can make their next devious move, Bong springs a rather gruesome surprise, and the film takes a darker turn. That’s the brilliance of it — it combines razor-sharp social satire and pure knockabout farce with thriller and even horror elements.

It’s so cleverly constructed — and that includes the title, because by the end we’re not sure whether the parasites are the poor leeching off the rich, or the rich exploiting the poor. Don’t be put off by the subtitles. It’s unmissable.

Crazy supervillain Margot has a blast

Birds Of Prey: And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn (15)

Verdict: Enjoyable hokum

Rating:

A movie has to go some way to justify an ostentatious title such as this — and the good news is that this one does. It’s a blast.

I confess to sitting down with apprehension. The DC stable of superhero movies, created to give Marvel a run for their very large pots of money, has sent out too many misfires, one of which was 2016’s Suicide Squad.

Still, that film did introduce us to Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, the loose-cannon girlfriend of Jared Leto’s Joker, which was a sizeable tick in its favour.

Margot Robbie stars as Harley Quinn (pictured), the loose-cannon girlfriend of Jared Leto¿s Joker, which was a sizeable tick in its favour

Margot Robbie stars as Harley Quinn (pictured), the loose-cannon girlfriend of Jared Leto’s Joker, which was a sizeable tick in its favour

Here, having just been dumped by the Joker, she’s an even looser cannon. No sobbing under the bedclothes for her. No, in her anger and grief she drives a petrol tanker into a Gotham City chemicals factory.

If she can’t shack up with a supervillain, why not just be one?

After that, director Cathy Yan, and writer Christina Hodson, don’t constrain themselves too much with a coherent narrative. The film is as anarchic as Harley herself, with some nonsense about a priceless diamond eventually bringing together an unlikely sisterhood — the birds of prey of the title: Harley, a tenacious cop (Rosie Perez), a pickpocket (Ella Jay Basco), a nightclub singer (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), and a killer with a crossbow (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).

This is a movie in which women repeatedly get the better of men, but it’s agenda-driven only in the way that the petrol tanker is driven — purely to achieve wild, explosive results.

Of course, for the girls to prevail fully, there has to be one man who treats them with particular unpleasantness.

This is underworld boss Roman Sionis (a weirdly cast Ewan McGregor), who in the film’s most uncomfortable scene humiliates a woman in his nightclub for laughing too loudly.

It’s a sequence that might have been described as misogynistic in the hands of a male director. At the very least, it borders on bad taste. But then so does much of the movie.

It’s extremely watchable, though, with great action sequences and a lively sense of fun.

This makes it a solid follow-up to last year’s enjoyable Shazam! for the DC Extended Universe, which is getting its act together at last.

Roll up for my Oscar winners . . .  

The Academy Awards don’t always get it right. On Sunday evening, some of the most deserving recipients will again miss out; we can only hope the voters get it more right than wrong.

I’ll be surprised if the four main acting categories don’t follow last Sunday’s Baftas exactly, but with the Oscars, you never know.

There’s one award to bet your shirt on, though. I’ll be amazed if Roger Deakins, the brilliant British cinematographer of 1917, doesn’t go away clutching his second statuette.

Here are my predictions, alongside my preferences…

Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood or 1917. Pictured: Brad Pitt with Margaret Qualley

Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood or 1917. Pictured: Brad Pitt with Margaret Qualley 

Best picture 

Will go to: Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood or 1917

Should go to: Little Women or Parasite

Best Actor 

Will go to: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

Should go to: Joaquin Phoenix

Best actress  

Will go to: Renee Zellweger (Judy)

Should go to: Renee Zellweger

Best supporting actor 

Will go to: Brad Pitt (Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood)

Should go to: Brad Pitt

Best supporting actress 

Will go to: Laura Dern (Marriage Story)

Should go to: Florence Pugh (Little Women)

Best director

Will go to: Sam Mendes (1917) or Martin Scorsese (The Irishman)

Should go to: Sam Mendes or Bong Joon-ho (Parasite)



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