Tom Hooper’s Cats is still fresh in our minds, but already we’ve got another critically panned talking animal movie making waves for all the wrong reasons.
Yes, Stephen Gaghan’s Dolittle might star one of the biggest names in entertainment in the form of Robert Downey Jr., but it made just $22 million domestically this weekend. And with an estimated budget nearing $180 million, we don’t need to tell you how terrible that is.
Furthermore, its global total is only $57.3 million, and with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 18%, it looks like Dolittle is destined to sink without a trace at the box office. But it’s not only the film’s poor performance that has folks talking, as one of the scenes near its end has left fans in absolute shock.
Long story short, there’s a dragon that Dolittle ends up helping out. He’s sick due to bowel blockage and before we get to the reactions currently circulating on social media, we’ll let ComicBook.com paint a picture for you of what goes down in the scene in question:
The issue making the dragon sick? Bowel blockage, which prompts Dolittle to put his hand up the dragon’s backside and start pulling out a bunch of things you probably wouldn’t expect to find in a dragon butt – including bagpipes. Eventually, the dragon passes gas and is cured. The dragon is so happy, he thanks Dolittle by letting him take a piece of the Eden tree’s fruit. The day and the queen is saved in the weirdest way possible.
Yep, you read all that right. And perhaps unsurprisingly, folks have flooded social media with all kinds of reactions to what they saw during Dolittle‘s final act.
The peak of cinema has been reached in #Dolittle where Ralph Fiennes, voicing a CGI tiger named Barry, gets kicked in the crotch, yelps with all he's got and says "Ooo my Barry's berries!"
And all that's before Robert Downey Jr. pulls bagpipes out of a dragon's rectum.
— Wil Loper (@TheCantaLoper) January 19, 2020
***SPOILERS FOR DOLITTLE***
You know the part in the trailer where it looks like there’s a bunch of wind blowing in his face? That’s a dragon fart.
— Why didn’t you see The Fall Guy?? (@PussInGroots) January 19, 2020
Nothing in Dolittle (or life) prepares you for a multi-minute sequence of Robert Downey Jr deciding, without much rhyme or reason, to have his animal companions turn a dragon on her back while he digs corpses from her asshole as she grunts and rips a massive fart.
— 🌹Wess🍉 (@GeekyManatee) January 19, 2020
I had been warned over and over again before I went to see Dolittle, but nothing, and I mean NOTHING, could have prepared me for the visceral experience of having to watch Robert Downey Jr. pull a set of bagpipes out of a dragon's ass
— Austin Olivia Kendrick (@aok_wav) January 19, 2020
Over the course of maybe 90 seconds that feels like five hours, Dolittle extracts the bones and armor of several Spanish soldiers, just ripping corpses from the dragon’s anus before finally arriving at the source of the blockage, a set of bagpipes.
— Jacob Chapman (@weebservations) January 19, 2020
https://twitter.com/AlexKrnacik/status/1218701882992009219
I’m not one to give out spoilers, but feel like I need to make an exception this one time:
The climax of the new #Dolittle reboot features a 5 minute scene where the doctor sticks his hand inside a constipated dragon’s asshole to remove a set of bagpipes. I wish I was kidding.— Faronheit (@faronheit) January 19, 2020
I thought I had seen everything in my life, but then Dr. Dolittle gave a dragon a rectal exam. Now I can die terrified#Dolittle #DolittleMovie
— The Waynemaker (@TheWaynemaker) January 18, 2020
The dragon enema goes on for so long.#Dolittle
— A Cat Named Kino 📽️😺 (@FritSlang) January 18, 2020
Add Dolittle to the list of things I’d rather watch than Cats.
And RDJ anally probes a dragon in this.
— Amanda the Jedi (@AmandaTheJedi) January 18, 2020
https://twitter.com/Jeremiah_VH/status/1218974450168868867
https://twitter.com/DrewsClues/status/1218864064350343168
https://twitter.com/gazebospills/status/1218826868201123840
Of course, this isn’t the only issue people have with the pic, as it’s also being trashed by critics. /Film has called it “an unwatchable circus,” while New York Magazine admits that “I wasn’t expecting Dolittle to be good, exactly, but I wasn’t expecting to be quite this bad.” And elsewhere, Richard Roeper summed it up with a simple “Please make it stop.”
So yeah, Dolittle is a massive flop on all counts. But hey, if you’ve always wondered what it would look like if Robert Downey Jr. were to perform a colonoscopy on a dragon, it might just be the movie for you.