Doctor Dolittle (1967)

Copyright 19 December 1967 by Apjac Productions, Inc. New York opening at Loew's State: 19 December 1967. U.S. release: December 1967. London opening at the Odeon, Marble Arch: 12 December 1967 (sic). Australian release: December 1967. Sydney opening at the Mayfair. 13,680 feet. 152 minutes.NOTES: Won Academy Awards for Best Song, "Talk to the Animals", and Best Special Visual Effects (only Abbott was nominated), defeating "Tobruk".Negative cost: $18 million. Print, advertising and distribution expenses: $10 million. Initial domestic gross rentals: $6,215,000. Worldwide gross rentals: a little over $10 million.COMMENT: Although Doctor Dolittle has a poor reputation (mostly because of the simple fact that it failed to recover its huge negative and Todd-AO print costs at the almighty box-office), it's a most entertaining and delightfully realized musical fantasy. Whether singing or acting, Rex Harrison handles the title role with consummate ease. And there are great supporting performances from Newley, Eggar, Bull and most memorably Attenborough. Assisted by marvelous sets (some built on real locations at Castle Combe, England, and Santa Lucia in the British West Indies) and entrancing visual effects, Fleischer's direction is sufficiently fluid to carry the film through 152 magical minutes.

I think one of the things leaving a bad rep on this movie is that most of the reviewers are adults. Well sure, watching it as an adult I found this movie to be cheesy, lame and weird, not at all like the books I fell in love with as a little kid, but when I was a kid I remember seeing this on VHS and I loved it. I found the acting to be excellent, the stories were funny and exciting and I still remember the lyrics to songs like, "My Friend The Doctor" right out of the movie. I do agree with most reviewers that Dr. Dolittle is pretty bad by most standards, but it's a movie for children, and it was very effective for me as a child. I recommend watching this for nostalgic value or for fun, don't watch it expecting something amazing, but just watch it to laugh at it and you might be surprised.

I have to say that it flags in the second half, but I thought the first half was absolutely wonderful, the songs were terrific, it looked beautiful, it was by turns funny and touching. I was sitting there saying, "Why in the world did this flop? It's wonderful!" But I guess it cost an enormous amount to make.Loved Harrison; Loved Newley; Loved the songs; Loved the sets. I DO wish it ended as strongly as it began, though."Like Animals" - which I had never heard before - floored me. What an incredible song for someone who loves animals. And what a fantastic performance of it.

The thing about getting older is that nostalgia begins to rear its head and one looks at films from one's youth through a haze of sentimentality. Back in 1967 when I was ten years old, "Doctor Dolittle" was all over the place. Toys, dolls, games and posters were everywhere, and the radio and TV variety shows were full of Sammy Davis Jr. singing "If I Could Talk to the Animals." Even with all of this, "Doctor Dolittle" seemed just the kind of family entertainment that I tended to avoid. Now, more than 40 years later, I've finally got around to seeing the film, but I'm no closer to knowing if I would have liked it any better at age ten.The problem with the film seems to be one of mistaken premises. Studios looked at "The Sound of Music," "Mary Poppins" and "My Fair Lady" and tried to duplicate their success, but they seemed to have paid attention to all the wrong things.The adaptation of a popular children's book (like "Mary Poppins") was a good idea, but rather than attempt to recreate the rather dumpy doctor described in the books ("Mary Popping"s David Tomlinson would have been great, but he lacked marquee value, likewise "Dolittle"s, circus-owner, Richard Attenborough would have made a great Dolittle…certainly a livelier one) they opted for the stiff and starchy Rex Harrison. The actor's lack of warmth may have fit the character's unease with humans, but his clear disinterest in anyone else in the film comes across as merely distant and bored. The apathetic Harrison doesn't even try to make Dolittle even a little bit different from "My Fair Lady"s Professor Higgins. Coming across solidly as a misanthrope, he fails also to demonstrate any real rapport with the menagerie of animals on display.The charmless Harrison was greatly helped by the winning softness of Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady." Here Harrison has zero chemistry with Anthony Newly (whom it's reported he disliked for being Jewish) nor the requisite veddy-British female love interest, Samantha Eggar who is not only waaaay to young for him, but, despite her stunning looks, adds absolutely nothing to the film because she seems even more distracted and bored than Harrison. Lastly, there is a mush-mouthed little boy thrown in for no apparent reason (William Dix) beyond giving Newly someone remotely human to give plot exposition to.The songs from "Mary Poppins" and, to a somewhat lesser extent, "The Sound of Music" had the quality of being witty and smart while having a sing-song, nursery-rhyme quality that made it easy for kids to remember and want to sing along. The undistinguished collection of songs in "Doctor Dolittle" sound more like they were written with hopes of becoming standards or Oscar contenders than on being anything that kids might find fun to listen to.From beginning to end "Doctor Dolittle" is a clumsy musical almost on par with "Lost Horizon" in its inability to entertain on even the simplest levels. I think fans of Rex Harrison may like the movie, for it is what he does film after film, and it is a pretty good showcase for the phenomenon that was Anthony Newly (an oddly fascinating actor/singer whose unconventional looks and singing style could only have made it in the 60s), but "Doctor Dolittle" is dreary when it should be cheerful, lumbering when it should be light-hearted, and long-long-long. If the filmmakers were less cynical about tapping into the "The Sound of Music" money-making zeitgeist and more concerned with actually making a fun children's classic, there's no telling how much could have been done musically with the "Doctor Dolittle" books.