Metacritic reviews

The film is so eager to please, so relentlessly quippy and quirky and tipped with antic whimsy, it often feels like visiting a zoo built into a Tilt-A-Whirl.

Characters go from one place to the next with no explanation and no second thought, and even single scenes play out as if someone attacked the reel of film with a pair of scissors.

It's fun enough to keep audiences mostly entertained for its hour and 45 minute runtime, but there's nothing particularly memorable to latch onto - not the CGI animals, not the fantasy world and not even Downey Jr's performance.

The studio did its best to taxidermy this mess into something presentable, but it’s hard to make a Doctor Dolittle movie if you can’t even understand the parable of the scorpion and the frog.

It’s ultimately a miracle that despite the tortured production process, Dolittle can most generously be described as passable for young, undiscerning viewers. It won’t charm or amuse you particularly but it’s not a catastrophe, the highest praise I can muster.

Sheen and Banderas make their characters fun, but they’re the only ones.

And while I understand Downey wanting to make a movie for his kids, the world might be better served if, at long last, he made one for himself.

Dolittle’s inability to completely develop any of its characters reduces the film to all pomp and no circumstance.

We have the first serious contender for Wasted Opportunity of the Decade.

An unpleasant, incoherent mess that feels like it was stitched together from outtakes and reshoots of something that used to look totally different.