With his time playing Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe officially over, Robert Downey Jr. is now free from the shackles of multi-picture contracts, and able to feature in anything he wants. As one of the biggest stars in the industry, the 54 year-old will no doubt be fielding plenty of offers, and will have the opportunity to pick and choose between his projects. Unfortunately, though, his first post-MCU outing looks to be a huge misstep.
There are some movies that just have ‘box office bomb’ written all over them, and Dolittle definitely fits the criteria. At no point has there been anything approaching positive buzz surrounding it, which isn’t an encouraging sign for an effects-heavy blockbuster with a budget rumored to be $175 million. Things weren’t helped by reports of extremely negative reactions to test screenings, either, which then led to extensive rewrites and reshoots, resulting in the original release date of May 2019 being pushed back to this upcoming weekend.
Downey Jr. admitted that he decided to make Dolittle after discussing it with his wife, who acts as producer under the duo’s Team Downey banner, so that they could work together on a movie that they could share with their children. Hopefully the kids like it, too, because based on the early reviews, not a lot of people do.
In fact, at the time of writing, Dolittle sits at an awful 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, and those numbers seem very unlikely to increase over the coming days, and with the top end of projections indicating that the movie stands to make $25 million tops at the domestic box office this weekend, it looks like we have 2020’s first dud on our hands.
The wannabe fantasy epic is being absolutely savaged by critics right now, many of whom are struggling to find any redeeming qualities whatsoever, with /Film describing it as “an unwatchable circus,” New York Magazine admitting that “I wasn’t expecting Dolittle to be good, exactly, but I wasn’t expecting to be quite this bad,” and Richard Roeper summing it up with a simple “Please make it stop.”
Not only does Dolittle mark Downey Jr.’s first post-Iron Man gig, but also the first time he’s appeared in any movie outside of the MCU since 2014. Given the scathing reviews coming his way though, hopefully the actor decides on something a lot better for his next performance.
