Dr. Dolittle

The doctor is in...almost as much a misfire as the original 1967 Rex Harrison musical that nearly sunk Twentieth Century Fox. Eddie Murphy is kept on a tight leash as Dr. John Dolittle, who, to his horror, suddenly finds he can talk to the animals, a gift he has repressed since childhood. This complicates the buyout of his practice by a conglomerate as the increasingly agitated Dolittle finds himself overrun with a menagerie of fine-feathered and four-legged patients who are voiced by a stellar breed of comedians, including Garry Shandling and Julie Kavner as bickering pigeons, Albert Brooks as a suicidal tiger and Chris Rock as a jive-talking hamster. A muzzled Murphy essentially plays straight man while the screenplay indulges in a barrage of butt jokes and other anal-related humor (I thought this was supposed to be a family film). The tiresome point is that Dolittle should accept his misfit gift, although a better movie would have taken its cue from Hugh Lofting's stories and conveyed the wonder of being able to, as the old song goes, "grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals." A sell-through priced box office hit, this is sure to be a popular request and it's a perfect choice--for video stores. Not recommended. (K. Lee Benson)