If you were underwhelmed by this year's Robert Downey Jr. vehicle Dolittle, you weren't alone
- and one of the flick's script doctors knows why.
Seth Rogen, who was brought in to do an uncredited punch-up on Dolittle's screenplay, had some
harsh words about the film during a recent conversation with Howard Stern. According
to him, the whole production was essentially a house of cards waiting to come crashing
down.
Rogen often serves as a writer on his own films, but it's not exactly common knowledge
that he's often tapped to rehab problematic screenplays, so respected are his writing
skills. In the case of Dolittle, he says that he immediately recognized the project for
what it was: An empty shell.
Rogen told Stern:
"Some movies are like scams. It's like buying blueprints to a house that looks nice, but
when you try to actually build the house it doesn't stand up properly."
"That is a thing that happens with films and I recognize it sometimes, where I will see
a movie and be like, 'Oh they lied, whoever wrote and directed this movie lied.'"
That's pretty brutal, but Rogen wasn't done. He went on to suggest that the "creative minds"
behind Dolittle knew that the project was a half-baked one when they sold the brass
at Universal on the picture. He dished:
"They made it seem like they were selling the studio an actual, functional film, but
they did not. They sold them like the schematics of a movie that when built does not hold up
to stress testing."
He added:
"I'll only say this because it was reported, and I'm going to tread lightly because I am
close with many of the people involved, but I did that on the Dr. Dolittle film."
Rogen went on to explain that while the job of a script doctor is a relatively low-pressure
one from a professional and creative standpoint, that shouldn't be taken to mean that those
brought in to fix what maybe can't be fixed have no horse in the race at all. He explained
that it's a pretty "cushy position to be in," adding:
"Stakes are low for you personally in that role, which is nice. But it's also like, you
want to help! I like movies, and also I like the actors in that movie, and I don't want
anyone to not be happy with the movie."
On the other hand, though, the writer implied that on some projects, trying to wrangle the
script into submission is akin to slapping a Band-Aid on the hull of the Titanic. Dolittle
was such a project - and Universal pretty much knew it.
Rogen continued, saying,
"[Universal has] been very supportive of me and my career and made a lot of our movies,
and I like the people who work there, so I genuinely want to make things better if I
can. [But the studio was] having problems with the movie, and were calling in people
to help kind of get to the bottom of it."
Robert Downey Jr. is one of the most charismatic actors of his generation; perhaps only he
could have taken what was, in 2008, a C-list Marvel superhero and built not only a trilogy
around him, but a mega-franchise destined to go down in history as the most ambitious
cinematic undertakings ever. Even he, however, couldn't save Dolittle - the first project
he took on after wrapping up his eleven-year run as Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
- from collapsing all the way down to its ramshackle foundations.
Released in January 2020, well before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theaters nationwide,
Dolittle drew a dismal 14 percent rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with critics
lambasting every aspect of the production, from the photography to the editing to, yes,
the writing, which was found to be full of lame potty humor in service of a meandering,
borderline formless plot.
"Something smells wrong - and that's coming from a guy who loves the smell of butts."
Even RDJ, a consummate professional, seemed to be phoning it in, perhaps aware that the
only good thing to come out of this film was going to be his paycheck. Dolittle bombed
at the box office, and deservedly so; it was one of the first true turkeys of 2020, and
it appears that we now know why. It just wasn't built to be anything but.
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