Dolittle - Auditions (2019) User Reviews

Does not get me curious about the film at all

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 14 May 2020]

"Dolittle - Auditions" is a short film from late 2019, so this one is roughly half a year old now and you can say it is basically a collection of many really short films. Each of those includes one specific animal that is/was auditioning to be in the new Dr. Dolittle movie. The one who is checking out how good the animals are is the guy you see on the photo here on imdb, Mr. Robert Downey Jr. He also plays the title character in said Dolittle movie. Well, I believe it turned out to be a flop and honestly looking at the quality and take on comedy in this really short film we have here, I am not surprised at all. It takes a really special kind of lack of talent to make all these snippets with these spectacular animals feel so bland and uninteresting. Especially taking into account that there are many really great voice actors doing the animal voices here. And with "animal voices", I mean actual talking. Because the key idea behind Dr. Dolittle (also in those older takes on the subject with Rex Harrison and Eddie Murphy) is that he can hear animals talk like humans. Okay, I will not go deeper into detail about this because it is more appropriate to discuss when we take a look at the "real" movie, but let me say that, even if I am not (anymore) a great Robert Downey Jr. fan, I thought this would be better. I would not even blame him or the voice actors. They basically do what they can, but the script is not really doing them any favors at all. The best moments are mildly funny, the worst moments are a failed attempt at comedy. And the latter is definitely dominant in this short film. I must say I am glad it was this short because honestly, I was close to giving it an even lower rating and declaring it a failure. It already starts in a weak way when we see something like "no humans allowed", "except one" and right afterwards, we do not only see Robert Downey Jr., but also a camera or microphone assistant or something. As if they forgot about these words on the screen so quickly. And all that after correcting them even. So yeah, no surprise the movie did not turn out in a convincing manner if this short film is used as promo and I am genuinely worried that it is packing above-average moments into 110 seconds already and the film is even worse. A definite contender for career worst for Downey Jr., Fiennes, Malek, Thompson etc. Don't watch.