GWNEUD IDDO STOPIO (DOLITTLE)

It has been seriously tempting to write a one sentence review of 'Dolittle'.

If I had done that, there is no doubt in my mind what the sentence would have been.

How the f**k did this get made?

However 'Dolittle' should be dissected.

To begin on a positive note, Stephen Gaghan's film looks terrific.

But all that glistens is a long way away from being gold in what is a terrible mess of a movie.

A second cinematic reboot of Hugh Lofting's 1920 series of children's novels about a doctor with a gift of talking to animals, it follows in the footsteps of Richard Fleischer's beloved 1967 musical 'Dr Dolittle' with Rex Harrison.

It also follows 'Dr Dolittle' - Betty Thomas's contemporary 1998 updating of the story with Eddie Murphy.

That film was such a hit it inspired a 2001 sequel and three direct to video sequels about Dolittle's daughter in 2006, 2008 and 2009.

Gaghan has chosen to go back to a period setting in the latest version, with Robert Downey Jr playing the eccentric doctor with some sort of accent common to the Punjab region of Wales.

In a very overblown preamble, we are told how Dolittle was gifted an animal sanctuary with his wife, Kasia Smutniak's Lily by Jessie Buckley's Queen Victoria.

However when Lily is lost at sea during an adventure, Dolittle is so overcome with grief he becomes a recluse.

Outside the estate, Harry Collett's Tommy Stubbins is hunting with his family.

However he is loathe to shoot animals but accidentally hits a squirrel.

Disturbed by what has happened, he is guided by Emma Thompson's Polynesia, a macaw to Dolittle's estate to persuade the good doctor to carry out emergency surgery on the squirrel.

Carmel Laniado's Royal Maid of Honour Lady Rose turns up as well, with an urgent request for Dolittle to head to Buckingham Palace to treat the Queen who has fallen seriously ill.

Dolittle is in no fit state to head to London, so his animals gas him and groom him as best they can.

However, their main motivation for going to the Palace is that the animal sanctuary will only exist as long as Victoria is alive.

Should she die, the animals will be let loose to the mercy of hunters.

Dolittle, Tommy, Lady Rose and several of the animals turn up at court, causing mayhem.

They find Michael Sheen's obsequious and egotistical Doctor Blair Mudfly treating the Queen with leaches but giving a grim prognosis to Jim Broadbent's pompous Lord Thomas Badgley.

With the help of his trusty bespectacled hound, Tom Holland's Jip and his acute sense of smell, Dolittle is able to detect the Queen has been drinking tea laced with some kind of nightshade.

The only way to cure her is to obtain the magical Fruit of Eden from the land where Lily originated from.

Dolittle sets sail with his trusty crew of animals which also include Rami Malek's shy gorilla Chi Chi, Jon Cena's happy go lucky polar bear Yoshi, Kumail Nanjiani's mischievous ostrich Plimpton and Octavia Spencer's duck with a metal leg, Dab Dab.

They get into jolly scrapes including an encounter with Lily's father, Antonio Banderas' King Rassouli and a tiger called Barry, voiced by Ralph Fiennes who has issues with Dolittle.

Mudfly also follows Dolittle with his own boat, determined to sabotage his mission.

What Gaghan delivers is a movie straight out of the 'Peter Rabbit' school of filmmaking where you take a much loved story and destroy it with loads of wiseass animals and terrible stereotyping.

So while Downey Jr butchers his supposed Welsh accent like a hoarse Anthony Hopkins whispering the lyrics to 'Goodness Gracious Me', we have to endure stereotypes of upper class English buffoons in the Royal Court and ineffectual Busby hatted soldiers.

Clearly geared for audiences outside the UK, it is like watching a live action movie of a shortbread tin as the voice cast chatter excitedly about going to "Bucking-ham" Palace.

There are also strange narrative omissions.

Collett's Stubbins appoints himself as Dolittle's apprentice and seems to forget he has a family for much of the movie.

The feeble plot to murder Buckley's Queen also seems to have no grasp of Royal succession nor does Gaghan have the energy or enthusuasm to even make the Kerry actress resemble Victoria.

Downey Jr has been panned for his accent and rightly so - it's about as welcome a sound as Robert Shaw scraping his nails on a blackboard in 'Jaws'.

What makes it particularly unforgivable is the presence of Michael Sheen who hails from Newport and Port Talbot.

However what's worse is his terrible ham acting, which only serves to further the impression that 'Dolittle' is essentially a vanity vehicle for him to do that cocky, eye rolling schtick he does in the 'Marvel Avengers' and 'Sherlock Holmes' movies.

Thompson, Cena, Nanjiani, Holland, Spencer and Fiennes are saddled with some really dreadful dialogue - the American voices given to animals is particularly grating.

Selena Gomez, Frances de la Tour, Marion Cotillard and Will Arnett also provide voices but also seem to sleepwalk their way through the mess.

Collett and Smutniak make for very bland, by the book youthful characters.

Sheen, Broadbent, Buckley and Banderas also go through the motions, while Ralph Ineson and Joanna Page as Stubbins' uncle and aunt barely have a chance to make an impression.

'Dolittle' fails not just because of Downey Jr's performance but because Gaghan, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand's screenplay is so lazy and so smug.

But it also drags - even at a relatively lean running time of 101 minutes.

The plot is risible. The script is terrible. The acting has more ham than you would get at your local Tesco.

'Dolittle' is frankly a depressing spectacle.

It's like watching a drowning man being engulfed by the waves with nothing to grab hold of and no hope of ever being rescued.

Gaghan's film also makes 'Blumhouse's Fantasy Island' look disciplined.

And that's a low that no film could ever recover from.

('Dolittle' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on February 7, 2020 and was made available for streaming and on DVD on June 15, 2020)