Dr. Dolittle is based on the children’s books by Hugh Lofting and stars Eddie Murphy as the title character who has the ability to talk to animals. As the story goes, Dolittle began talking to animals when he was a small boy, but his father (played by Ossie Davis), concerned about this trait, calls in a priest to purge his son. Flash forward some 20 years and the exorcism seems to have held. Not only does Dolittle not talk to animals, he doesn’t seem to like them that much. When his family’s away he means to take care of his daughter’s missing guinea pig by setting up dozens of rat traps. But a bump on the head brings his gift back so that he can talk to dogs and owls and even drunk French monkeys. Word spreads in the animal kingdom, and soon a horde of beasts in all shapes and sizes and with all sorts of ailments appear at his doorstep, wanting to be cured by this doctor who can understand them. While Dolittle is jazzed by the challenge of treating animals, he is a people doctor working out a big-money deal with an HMO, where his new-found ability might be frowned upon.

Murphy knows a thing or two about career decisions, having seen himself peak in the Eighties and then peter away to nothing via ego-driven films such as A Vampire in Brooklyn. Murphy made a small comeback with 1996’s The Nutty Professor, a broad farce that showcases his skills of performing multiple characters and of going along with the ridiculous. In Dr. Dolittle, Murphy is a bit more staid, the classic film dad who’s too preoccupied with career and how things should be to really pay attention to his family. But like The Nutty Professor, Dr. Dolittle’s humor is something less than sophisticated. It is, in a word, rectum-centric, posting no less than 12 bottom-focused jokes – from a rat with gas to a guinea pig who gets sat on after falling in a toilet.

Eddie Murphy in Dr. Dolittle.

While this may sound raucous, Dr. Dolittle is rather hum-drum. This may be because the filmmakers – director Betty Thomas and screenwriters Nat Mauldin and Larry Levin – were too focused on how a movie should be rather than thinking through its possibilities. Sure, a dog at a vet moaning, “There’s a thermometer in my butt” has its place, but a whole movie of this? The film has its moments – the dog with the tennis-ball obsessive-compulsive disorder, for one. But these moments are rare, little flashes to get from point A to point B so that Dr. Dolittle can become a good father and learn to live through his conscience.