Dr. Dolittle 2

As much as any actor alive, Eddie Murphy has a tendency to polarise reactions – so if you actually find that the guy’s routine genuinely tickles your funnybone, Dr. Dolittle 2 won’t disappoint. Whatever one’s opinions of Murphy’s unique talents – I am inclined to despise them – you have to be genuinely impressed at the way he has maintained a prominent profile over more than a decade of consistent comic capering, and Dolittle has done predictably excellent business Stateside. His success is obviously based on a finely-tuned nose for the lowest common denominator, but there are few pursuits more pointless than slagging bad-taste comedians: they’re merely satisfying the demands of the ignorant, who have every right to find Murphy and his like funny if that’s how they really feel.

Dolittle 2 is every bit as brain dead as you might expect, following on fairly staightforwardly from the original, and stars our insanely grinning hero as a doctor blessed with the supernatural ability to talk to animals, which he then spends the movie’s entire duration doing. As ever with Murphy, the humour is a mixture of broad physical slapstick and time-honoured Uncle Tom-foolery, with subtlety in short supply and sophistication non-existent. Thus, you’ll either run screaming for the exits or tough it out with a pained blood-red facial expression throughout, depending on your form.

Predictably enough, it turns into a hyperactive one-man show with chattering animals by way of an additional bonus: a screening audience packed predominantly with under-tens went along with it without ever raising the roof with laughter, and the only faintly funny sketch (Murphy teaching a bear how to seduce the ladeez) only becomes so by virtue of being soundtracked to Lionel Richie. All the same, while I wouldn’t dream of sitting through it again, I must confess that I had a reasonably painless time and wasn’t overcome with the urge to track down and kill the director. Murphy puts in as much physical energy as ever, the talking beasts are of inherent comic appeal to the very young, and apart from being far too artistically unambitious to be offensive, Dolittle 2 is also mercifully short.

Preferable to a slow death, which is more than could be said for most of the fortnight’s releases.