Critics really hate “Doolittle,” the new film starring Robert Downey, Jr.
On the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes, critics gave the movie just a 19% “fresh” rating — and some reviewers really slammed the flick.
“Dolittle is a not a film,” wrote NPR’s Scott Tobias. “Dolittle is a crime scene in need of forensic analysis. Something happened here. Something terrible. Something inexplicable.”
Peter Travers of the Rolling Stone was even more brutal. “Robert Downey, Jr. talks to the animals and hits a career low in this object lesson in cinematic incoherence that will leave children sad and confused and adults scratching their heads. Come back, ‘Cats,’ we forgive you.”
Still, people went. The $175 million movie pulled about $30 million on its opening day Friday and is expected to pull in $60 million worldwide by Monday.
But some moviegoers have been rudely surprised by a gross scene that comes at the end of the movie.
“This is a spoiler, but I need to share what I just witnessed because I feel like I’m going insane,” one viewer wrote on Twitter. “The climax of Dolittle is LITERALLY him pulling bagpipes out of a dragon’s clogged asshole, after which a polar bear voiced by John Cena exclaims ‘teamwork makes dreams work!’ ”
This is a spoiler, but I need to share what I just witnessed because I feel like I'm going insane.
The climax of Dolittle is LITERALLY him pulling bagpipes out of a dragon's clogged asshole, after which a polar bear voiced by John Cena exclaims "teamwork makes dreams work!"
— Ryan George (@theryangeorge) January 17, 2020
Wrote another: “There’s a scene in Dolittle where they pull a literal bagpipe out of a dragons ass and then it proceeds farts for about 20 seconds onto RDJ’s face. That’s all you need to know about this train wreck of a movie.”
There’s a scene in Dolittle where they pull a literal bagpipe out of a dragons ass and then it proceeds farts for about 20 seconds onto RDJ’s face. That’s all you need to know about this train wreck of a movie.
— dgdelariva (@dgdelariva) January 17, 2020
Movie critic Sara Stewart of the New York Post pondered how Downey felt about the scene. “There’s got to be a moment, as an actor watches himself on-screen pulling bagpipes out of a CGI dragon’s rear end, that he thinks, ‘Have I really fallen this far?'”
Others were sad about what had become of Downey’s career. “Iron Man died so Doolittle could pull a bagpipe enema out of a dragon,” wrote another Twitterer.
Iron Man died so Doolittle could pull a bagpipe enema out of a dragon.
— Jennifer (@emojiwitch) January 17, 2020
The Wall Street Journal wrote that those making the movie tried to install some quick fixes just before its release. In a piece headlined, “Universal Tries to Escape Disaster by Patching Up ‘Dolittle’ — Script rewrites, adding animal characters delayed release of the costly family film,” the writer notes that Doolittle “relieves an ornery beast’s indigestion by removing debris from its rectum. Flatulence jokes ensue”:
The scene was added late in the filmmaking process, one of several efforts Comcast Corp.’s Universal made to try to ensure a return on the $175 million it invested in the family-friendly movie, according to a person close to the production.
The studio’s decision to tinker with a nearly finished film delayed its release by nine months as it commissioned script rewrites and hired two new directors to help with about three weeks of additional photography, according to people familiar with the production. The goal of these measures, these people said, was to craft a sillier movie more likely to appeal to younger moviegoers and overseas audiences. …
After test-screening Mr. Gaghan’s initial version of the movie, Universal worried it wasn’t lighthearted enough to connect with children and families around the globe, according to people familiar with the production. The studio decided the movie needed more computer-generated animals and more laughs, the people said, and called in filmmakers and screenwriters with more experience in the genre. They said these included directors Chris McKay of “The Lego Batman Movie” and Jonathan Liebesman of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”