Robert Downey Jr’s Biggest Failure Is Trending On Streaming
Robert Downey Jr could not escape the legacy of Tony Stark with this terrible bomb that is doing shockingly well on free streaming.
It is undeniable that 2008’s Iron Man revived Robert Downey Jr’s career to a point unseen since John Travolta danced his way through Pulp Fiction. It not only kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and eventually, the entire paradigm of modern Hollywood), it transformed RDJ from a has-been Brat Pack member with a lot of liabilities into the single highest-paid actor in the world. To his credit, RDJ did not seem to ever phone in his role as Tony Stark, helping to turn Stan Lee’s vague idea of irritating liberals by creating a drunken capitalist superhero into an actual human character and icon of cinema. But after that, what to do? Where can someone brought back from the brink of career death go? As it turns out, Robert Downey Jr decided to go with Dolittle, which turned out to be his single greatest failure in decades. Despite that, Dolittle is in the top ten most-watched movies on Freevee.
Robert Downey Jr’s Dolittle is very loosely adapted from a series of early 20th century children’s adventure novels by Hugh Lofting, which followed the adventures of a quirky physician turned naturalist who can speak to animals. The series has been adapted multiple times, most notably for a 1967 film starring Rex Harrison and a series of films in the early 2000s, first starring Eddie Murphy and then Kyla Pratt (as Dolittle’s daughter) and Norm MacDonald as the voice of a dog. Robert Downey Jr’s movie splits the difference between those two adaptations, in that it retains the Victorian England setting of the former and the relentless animal voice stunt casting of the latter.
The famed comedian and early film star W.C. Fields reportedly coined the phrase “never work with animals or children,” on account of their tendency to steal the spotlight whenever on screen. It appears that Robert Downey Jr chose to not only ignore this advice but go a hard 180 degrees from it, as Dolittle is absolutely filled with mugging CGI animals doing zany things and adorable moppets imploring Doctor Dolittle to save the Queen of England (Jessie Buckley).
The actual plot of the movie is both simple and bizarrely convoluted. Basically, Queen Victoria is deathly ill and only Robert Downey Jr’s heavily Welsh-accented Doctor Dolittle can save her by finding a magic fruit while being pursued by an obsessed, unscrupulous doctor (Michael Sheen, committed to a bonkers performance as always). To expand on the plot, a young boy (Harry Collett) appoints himself Dolittle’s apprentice after injuring a squirrel voiced by Craig Robinson, there’s an English noblewoman (Carmel Laniado) who appears to be the Queen’s personal hand despite being ten years old, who also turns out to be the daughter of Antonio Banderas’ island king, there is a poisoning plot, and then a dragon farts really hard. That is not just a childish flatulence joke, it’s a crucial part of the plot.
Presumably, Robert Downey Jr was hoping Dolittle would be a franchise-starter. It is based on a known property (which conveniently dropped into the public domain) with a history of box office success, prominently featured family-friendly animation, and had everyone’s favorite: talking animals voiced by celebrities. A ridiculous number of famous names pop up as various beasts, most prominently the ever-game Emma Thompson as Robert Downey Jr’s right-hand parrot, Rami Malek as a gorilla, John Cena as a polar bear, Kumail Nanjiani as an ostrich, Ralph Fiennes as a tiger, Jason Jason Mantzoukas as an insect, Tom Holland as a dog, Marion Cotillard as a fox, and so, so many more. It is frankly exhausting, even before we get to the nadir of an ant doing an anachronistic Godfather reference.
Robert Downey Jr’s Dolittle crashed and burned almost immediately. Despite making over $251 million at the box office, its massive budget caused it to lose Universal Pictures as much as an estimated $100 million. It currently holds a very dismal 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, putting it into the company of other RDJ bombs like Gothika and Air America. However, history has shown us you can never keep Robert Downey Jr down. He is set to star in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Oppenheimer, which hopefully will at least be a return to critical good graces. Wherever Robert Downey Jr goes to move past the legacy of Iron Man, it won’t be back to Dolittle.
