Maleficent: Mistress of Evil European Premiere at BFI IMAX, London

When Eddie Murphy started making movies, he made Rated R action-dramas with filthy language, nudity and lots of murder and mayhem. Then in the space of about a decade, he phased into his “family film” era. There was no real reason for it, but some have said that Murphy wanted to make the kind of movies his idol Jerry Lewis would have made. He even remade some of Jerry Lewis’s movies. Anyway, that era of Eddie Murphy’s oeuvre has never been my cup of tea, except for the Dr. Dolittle movies. The first one never fails to make me laugh. It’s so stupid, I know. But I enjoy them. So… they decided to do another remake, or I guess they hope to make Dolittle into another mega-franchise full of CGI animals, because we have this now: Robert Downey Jr. doing a hilariously awful British accent and surrounding himself with CGI animals. Okay.

I wish they had leaned harder into the humor of Dr. Dolittle instead of making it about soaring music and beautiful animals and whatever. Check out the cast list: I would assume that most of those people are just doing animal voices. RALPH FIENNES!! Anyway… this is RDJ’s first post-Marvel role and it’s clear that he’s still down with #AllTheCGI. God, will this be another super-successful franchise for RDJ? I can’t. The accent is so bad and the story seems utterly nonsensical.

Poster courtesy of Universal and photo courtesy of WENN.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil European Premiere at BFI IMAX, London
World premiere of 'Avengers: Endgame'