Dr. Dolittle . Newcity Chicago . 06-29-98

Dr. Dolittle

DIRECTED BY: Betty Thomas

REVIEWED: 06-29-98

Filled to the brim with butt jokes, the cheerily vulgar "Dr. Dolittle" should delight more than just the crowds of 10-year-old boys who'll clamor to see a talking rat threatening to "get bubonic on your ass." Eddie Murphy is a San Francisco doctor who's repressed his lifelong ability to, well, talk to the animals. A few stray life lessons are learned by his family and partners in his medical practice, but it's mostly a matter of laying on the PG-13 verbal gags from various vermin, swine and livestock. I didn't expect to get as much pleasure as I got from the scattershot insults issuing from the mouths of SGI-generated and Henson's Creature Shop animals. While it loses steam toward the end, Betty Thomas' direction of the script by Nat Mauldin and Larry Levin had me crying several times from laughing so hard. I dunno, can you resist a quick shot of a dog behind bars at a kennel blurting, "I am Keyser Soze"? A guinea pig that sashays to "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi"? And a clown-suited capuchin monkey clutching an airline-sized bottle of Jack Daniel's confessing, "I'm a social drinker... Very social! Haaaaaa!" Among the voice artists are Albert Brooks as a depressed tiger, Norm Macdonald as a mutt named Lucky (asked his name, he confesses, "A little girl once called me, ÔOh please mommy any one but him'"), Chris Rock, John LeGuizamo, Gilbert Gottfried and Garry Shandling. And it all weighs in at a briskly paced 88m.

--Ray Pride

Full Length Reviews
Dr. Dolittle
Dr. Dolittle
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Dr. Dolittle

Capsule Reviews
Dr. Dolittle
Dr. Dolittle
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Other Films by Betty Thomas
Private Parts
The Brady Bunch Movie

Film Vault Suggested Links
Doug's First Movie
The Wind in the Willows
Muppets From Space

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