Il favoloso dottor Dolittle

Highly atmospheric and splendidly acted this film is a pure joy to watch. Legendary actor Rex Harrison give one of his best screen performances as the eracable,lovable Doctor. Anthony Newley gets one of his rare screen appearances and shows just what a talented performer he was.And of course Lord Attenbourgh's comic turn as Albert Blossom gives him rare comic opportunity.the score is well done by Leslie Bricusse (Newley's long time collaborator.)And the dialogue is sharp and witty. the performance are extremely real for a childeren's fantasy film. Its a shame that the Eddie Murphy misfire has taken recognition away from this charming film.

So attached am I to Rex Harrison's personage to the character of Doctor Dolittle, when I see copies of Hugh Lofting's books without the movie tie-in shots I actually feel cheated. There is no other Doctor Dolittle for me. Harrison is wonderful and regal amongst his animals and I love many of his lines (the spin he gives to his dialogue makes the words his own). My favorite: "When you say 'He can speak crab and pelican', they'll say 'Like hell he can!'" (cue parrot's ruffled reaction). Admittedly, "Doctor Dolittle" gets off to a clunky start with Anthony Newley telling of Dolittle's beginnings...and the film goes into stillborn flashback mode. I get defensive if a movie foists a flashback on me in the first 15 minutes (and this flashback is a long one, laden with silly slapstick). Why not start the story with Dolittle finding his voice, cut the introduction with Newley, and then get on with the plot? After this tiresome, talky opening, the pacing does pick up (right about the time Richard Attenborough enters as circus-owner Blossom). Harrison is on-target throughout but, story-wise, momentum doesn't build until the second hour, when Dolittle and his companions hit the South Seas in search of the Great Pink Sea Snail. Overall, the film simply LOOKS smashing, with marvelous locations in England's most beautiful city, Castle Combe. It is flawed (with that bad opening), but stick with it and see if you find Rex Harrison as charming as I did. *** from ****

I know it goes against the general tide to praise this film (the only other place I've ever read a really positive review of it being the back of its own video cover), but I'm going to do it--and I'll even attach my name! For, in my opinion, this musical adaptation by Leslie Bricusse of Hugh Lofting's delightful "Doctor Dolittle" series succeeds in a great many respects. I was enchanted as a child when I saw it in the cinema, and I still enjoy watching it on video with my own children.

The admittedly meandering plot combines elements from various of the Dolittle books, but it essentially concerns the Victorian veterinarian's quest for the Great Pink Sea Snail, an animal whose language he hopes to add to the thousands he has already learned. Thus the first part of the movie takes Dolittle and his friends through several adventures on their way to earning the money to make the journey, while the second finds the entourage actually setting sail (on the aptly-named "Flounder") for Sea Star Island and their goal. And, even if the musical *is* so front-end-loaded with big numbers that the second half seems anticlimactic, and even if the resolution of the plot's final conflict *is* jarringly abrupt, and even if the film's direction *is* a tad slow, it is *also* the case that I find more than enough pleasures along the way to compensate for these shortcomings.

One is Bricusse's marvelous score. Besides the Academy Award-winning "Talk to the Animals," he includes two other showcase pieces for star Rex Harrison's trademark "powerful patter" delivery, the humorous "Vegetarian" and the impassioned "Like Animals." Other up-tempo winners are "I've Never Seen Anything Like It" (brilliantly put across by Richard Attenborough--the twinkle never leaves his eye!--in what amounts to an extended cameo as wily circus-master Albert Blossom) and "Faraway Places," while tender ballads "When I look in Your Eyes" and "Beautiful Things" are very affecting. And if "After Today" seems to have been pulled from the trunk of another show by mistake, the other Anthony Newly numbers--including "My Friend the Doctor" and "This is the World of Doctor Dolittle" (as well as the lovely "Where are the Words," which is on my soundtrack album but not in the video)--are spot on.

Another pleasure is the cast. As the Doctor, Harrison is wonderful, of course. The film was originally conceived as a reunion project for him and composing team Lerner & Lowe, who'd written "My Fair Lady," and it's clear that the part was written for the star. But I'm impressed that eventual Lerner & Lowe stand-in Bricusse, though he was obviously influenced by "My Fair Lady," resisted what had to be the temptation to turn the main character into Henry Higgins--and that Harrison also didn't see the gig as a mere Higgins reprise. The charming Doctor--kind to animals, children, and people from all walks of life; educated and capable but somehow sweetly clueless at the same time; gentle but rousable to anger on behalf of his charges--is a different character, and Harrison gets him right.

As for the other leads, Anthony Newly, for once, is perfect as the elfin Matthew Mugg, while child actor and "whatever-happened-to" candidate William Dix is a fine if underused Tommy Stubbins. Even Samantha Eggar, in the mis-conceived role of a tentative love-interest for Dolittle, does well with the part she's been given. And strong support is provided by the aforementioned Attenborough, Peter Bull as the beefy English squire who is the closest thing to a villain in this piece, and Geoffrey Holder as Willie Shakespeare, head of a quirkily-PC group of island natives encountered during the voyage.

Finally, there's the appearance of the film: it's beautiful. If you find you can't enjoy a musical unless it's shot on a soundstage, the wide-open spaces won't work for you, but I loved all the wonderful locations.

This is a big movie, long and theatrically-structured (Overture, Act I, Entr'acte, Act II, and even Exit Music!). They don't make them like this anymore--which sounds like a straight line, but I mean it in a regretful way. :-) I recommend "Doctor Dolittle" heartily, and I think the family will enjoy it even more if, before you watch it, you read a couple of the original Dolittle books together first!

[P.S.-- don't be put off this film if you didn't happen to like the similarly-titled 1998 Eddie Murphy vehicle which billed itself as a remake. They're completely different!]

In the year 1845 Doctor John Dolittle is an eccentric physician in the English village of Puddleby. (The picturesque village of Castle Combe, Wiltshire was the prime location, although through some special effects magic this inland village in a landlocked county has somehow acquired a seaport and coastline). He finds that he has a much greater rapport with animals than he does with his human patients, so he switches to veterinary medicine instead, a field in which he enjoys great success because of his unique ability to talk to animals. The story follows his adventures in the company of his friends Matthew Mugg (an Irish cats'-meat salesman) and Tommy Stubbins (a young schoolboy) as they go in search of the Great Pink Sea Snail.

Hugh Lofting's "Doctor Dolittle" books were a great favourite of mine during my childhood, so I absolutely loved this film when my parents took the family to see it. Of course, I was then blissfully unaware that the film had been savaged by most of the critics, that it had been a box-office flop and that difficulties in production had meant that the costs massively overran the original budget. (The cost of the finished film was $17 million; only four years earlier that would have made it the most expensive film ever made). My sisters and I were not, however, alone in our love of the film; the Academy nominated it for a "Best Picture" Oscar, a nomination which at the time seemed incomprehensible to most people in the film world.

So how has "Doctor Dolittle" held up over the fifty-odd years since it was made? Well, I can now see its flaws in a way which I could not as a child, although it certainly has its good points. Rex Harrison makes an attractively charismatic hero, even though he bears little resemblance to the short, plump Dolittle of the books. As he had shown in "My Fair Lady" he was not the world's greatest singer, but as in that film he manages to stroll his way through his songs, reciting rather than singing them. The first half of the film, set against some attractively photographed Wiltshire countryside and concentrating on Dolittle's dealings with his animal friends, is still enchanting.

Bricusse's songs are something of a mixed bag. Seeing the film again recently some of them, especially "My Friend the Doctor", "I've Never Seen Anything Like It" and, of course, "Talk to the Animals", took me instantly back to the world of my childhood. Others, however, are instantly forgettable and I have difficulty recalling them even though I only saw the film a few days ago.

Even as a child I couldn't see the point of Emma Fairfax, a character created for the film and not found in Lofting's books, and I'm none the wiser now. The producers presumably invented her because they wanted a female character and thought that Polynesia the parrot, Sophie the seal and Sheila the fox didn't count, but they never really found a proper role for Emma, who veers between love-interest for Matthew and love-interest for the Doctor himself without ever coming down on one side or the other. The concentration on Emma means that Tommy, the character I really identified with as he was a boy of my own age, plays a less important role here then he does in the books.

From my adult perspective, the film really goes downhill in the second half when the main characters leave England. I have to admit that, although Lofting, an ardent pacifist and animal-rights advocate, was in other respects a man of progressive views, he was also a racist, and some of this is carried across into the Sea Star scenes. When the Doctor and his friends find the Giant Pink Sea Snail the creature seems rather disappointing, making you wonder why they went all that way just to find it. Possibly this was a figment of Lofting's imagination that works better on the printed page than it does on screen.

The film still seems to have a following today, and turns up regularly on television, but for me it is a part of my childhood that (unlike, say Disney's "Jungle Book") has not retained its magic for me as an adult. 6/10

DOCTOR DOLITTLE (1967) is what a "family classic" should be. Entertaining the whole way through, with catchy and witty songs, colorful performances, plenty of cute animals, and a script packed with imagination and a sense of fun.

DOLITTLE was a favorite in my family, and I grew up watching it on a VHS we'd taped from an old television broadcast. To me Rex Harrison was always "Doctor Dolittle", even though the film came late in his career. When I discovered his earlier film work, I was amused at seeing a "young Doctor Dolittle". So my views may be colored by nostalgia, although I recently saw the movie in its entirety for the first time in many, many years and found it to be great fun.

The story has the feel of an episodic adventure, taking our heroes to different places and having them do different things. This keeps the audience engaged throughout the nearly two and a half hour running time. Doctor John Dolittle (Rex Harrison) is a physician in 1840s England who is more interested in the various species of animals than in his human patients. So he becomes a strictly animal doctor (veterinarian) and, with the help of his genius pet parrot, learns hundreds of animal dialects. The various side-adventures in this film are all in service of Dolittle's quest to find a mythical giant pink sea snail. First he showcases a rare two-headed llama (a "pushmi-pullyu") at a circus until he can earn enough money to set sail. From there come legal complications, a jail break plot, adventure on the high seas, and still more fun on an exotic "floating" island.

Harrison gives a signature performance as the good doctor. Dolittle's a very kind fellow whose ideas about treating animals with as much respect as humans (and his practice of fitting short-sighted horses with glasses, for example) run counter to the prevailing minds of his "civilized" community. The man's an eccentric genius who doesn't fit in with human society. Harrison's portrayal gives Dolittle the amusing peculiarities of an absent-minded professor. His performance is pretty funny in an understated way.

Singer-songwriter-actor Anthony Newley plays Irishman Matthew Mugg, one of Dolittle's few friends who, along with young Tommy Stubbins (William Dix), accompanies the doctor on his adventures. Matthew introduces Stubbins (and the audience) to the wonderful world of Doctor Dolittle, and the two "ordinary" characters act as proxies for the audience amid the fantastical happenings that seem to follow Harrison's character wherever he goes.

Lovely Samantha Eggar plays Emma Fairfax (affectionately known to Matthew as "Fred"), who first sides against Dolittle, but comes to be enchanted by the life he leads. Miss Fairfax is meant to give the film a romantic subplot, but the intended romance is a bit confusing (surely Rex Harrison is much too old for Eggar).

Richard Attenborough gives a tremendous, high-energy performance as Blossom, the owner of the circus. I love seeing him bounce around as he sings "I've Never Seen Anything Like It". Caribbean actor Geoffrey Holder (LIVE AND LET DIE) is great as the surprisingly literate tribal chief on the floating island.

The songs by Leslie Bricusse are delightful. "Talk To The Animals" is a classic. "My Friend The Doctor" is contagiously joyful. I think the lyrics are particularly well-done on numbers like "I've Never Seen Anything Like It" and "Like Animals".

The world of DOCTOR DOLITTLE is unforgettable. A mild-mannered Englishman travels the world in his top hat, conversing with dogs, pigs, whales, fish, horses, chimpanzees, seals, and elephants. It's a world of dancing two-headed llamas, centenarian parrots educated in thousands of animal languages (including "dead" languages like dodo and unicorn), islands that move about the globe, and giant moths that fly back and forth between the Earth and the moon (constantly attracted to the other's light). The script is clever and imaginative. Several scenes stand out: the horse eye exam, the circus, the cunning seal escape, the absurd shipwreck, the tribal execution, the pink sea snail.

Having now seen the film as an adult, and finding the experience thoroughly charming, I can't believe how lowly regarded it is. DOCTOR DOLITTLE entertains from beginning to end with a sense of wonder, a sense of adventure, and a sense of humor. Rex Harrison anchors a solid cast and the songs are great. The movie is something unique. Something original and self-contained. Where else will you see a whale pushing an entire island across the ocean? Or a dog giving testimony in court? Or a tribe of natives performing Shakespeare? It's a family classic. What's not to like?

I may have been pre-conditioned since childhood to like this film, but some of the criticism seems a bit over-the-top, stemming from dissatisfaction with the film's Oscar attention. Even if you don't enjoy roadshow-length family musicals, you must admit that the production is impressive from a technical standpoint (the sets, the cinematography, the special effects, the animal wrangling).

I actually like DOCTOR DOLITTLE, directed by Richard Fleischer (20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA), better than its popular contemporary CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG. The latter is fun despite its weaknesses, but DOLITTLE is something wonderful.