Dr. Dolittle

Even the saintly pig and spider from Charlotte’s Web are likely to act up around Eddie Murphy. It’s no surprise, then, that in Dr. Dolittle (Twentieth Century Fox), a raunchy, good-time update of Hugh Lofting’s classic children’s tale about the chap who could talk to animals, the livestock get rowdy. A dog (voiced by Norm Macdonald) bullies. A guinea pig (Chris Rock) kibitzes. A tiger (Albert Brooks) complains. A pair of pigeons (Julie Kavner and Garry Shandling) bicker. Had Rex Harrison conversed with this menagerie in Richard Fleischer’s 1967 movie, perhaps the results wouldn’t have been so flea-bitten. As it is, this Dr. Dolittle is suitable for children who already laugh noisily at anything having to do with derrieres, as well as adults who share their comedy threshold.

Aside from turning jolly-wolly British whimsy on its witty-bitty head by making Doc D a natty black San Francisco physician with a Cosby-perfect family (including actual Cosby alumna Raven-Symone), Dr. Dolittle upends Murphy’s usual position as a loose live wire by making him the reactive straight man to a bunch of winged and furry wisenheimers. First, Dolittle refuses to dig that these cats (and dogs, etc.) really are talking to him. Then he resists playing their game. Finally he realizes that caring for strays—and his own odd-duck younger daughter (Kyla Pratt)—brings good karma. A new spin in Nat Mauldin and Larry Levin’s with-it screenplay is that the doctor and his colleagues (including favorite weasel Oliver Platt) are about to sell their warmhearted practice to a coldhearted corporation; only after Dolittle embraces all God’s creatures does he realize that a good M.D. pays more attention to patients than to profits.

The best route to letting the extravagantly gifted but exasperatingly inconsistent Eddie Murphy be Eddie Murphy has been under reconstruction lately (professionally speaking; his personal drama is a whole other zoo). Two years ago in The Nutty Professor, he found a great home for his wild energy. Dolittle contains that exuberance in a very small space—the doctor’s not much more than a nice guy with a weird talent—but that’s where the skill of director Betty Thomas come in. Swinging through slapstick setups, sardonic banter, and complicated visual traffic with the striking aesthetic good sense she brought to Private Parts and The Brady Bunch Movie, Thomas once again demonstrates her expertise in keeping indulgence and cliche at bay in even the coarsest and most anarchic of comic situations. She knows how to talk to Hollywood animals so well, they don’t even realize they’re being trained. B+