A Few Words About A few words about...™ Dr. Dolittle -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Phil Crosby]

LaLaLandRecords has just released a 2-CD set of an expanded soundtrack, with early demos and other extras as well.
http://lalalandrecords.com/Site/DoctorDolittle.html

 

[philip*eric]

Does anyone knoe what will be on the extra disc TT are sending out later? Is it a cd with just audio outtakes or a dvd with edited footage? I believe the first tv showing included the prologue with Harrison riding a giraffe to extract an alligator's sore tooth. I would think that sequence must then still exist. As the poster art had him on the giraffe,a scene from this was inserted later in the film but there is a continuity error in Harrison's clothing which most don't notice.
Two excellent books dealing with the making of the film are PICTURES IN REVOLUTION by Mark Harris and ROADSHOW! by Matthew Kennedy. Richard Fleischer's autobiography is also informative.If I recall correctly, Samantha Eggar's character was originally only going to be romantically drawn to Newley's charactet, but Harrison insisted that she be also drawn to him and that he be given one of the love songs. I think this hurt the storyline somewhat and added a romantic confusion which was unnecessary and over the heads of the viewing kids. I was 8 when I first saw it and liked most of it but was somewhat disappointed. I am looking forward to the blu ray as I have the German one and it is lacklustre. Bravo to Fox for spending money to restore a movie which nearly sank them. I hope they do the same for STAR!, which has many virtues and is a better movie in my opinion.
Last point, ANY other song from the score was worthier of a Best Song nomination and it should have gone to the non-nominated To Sir With Love anyway.

where did you read that TT was sending out an extra disc??

 

[ahollis]

Just finished watching this with two milinnials. They completely enjoyed and were said more than once that they couldn’t believe the movie didn't use CGI. Lol.

 

[MatthewA]

This was what computer animation could do in 1967.

I find it odd how people complain about the length of the film when it's 20 minutes shorter than My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. And consider Sir Rex made another movie for Fox four years earlier was twice as long and was supposed to be two movie. Perhaps you've heard of it: Cleopatra.

 

[Rob_Ray]

Doctor Dolittle is not one tenth as compelling as My Fair Lady or The Sound of Music or that 1964 Disney film you hate which is about the same length. It's also aimed more at younger children, who have notoriously short attention spans. The Ten Commandments runs 220 minutes and the time flies by, but some movies drag at 90 minutes. Who was it who, when asked how long a given movie should be, replied, "How long is it good?"

 

[bigshot]

I was a kid in this era and the lengths of movies back then has scarred me for life. I remember being taken to Dr Zhivago and experiencing excruciating torture. Even the good long movies made me itch. I hated going into a movie in broad daylight and coming out and it was night and the whole day was wasted. To this day I have trouble with movies that go over 2 hours. I remember having to force myself to sit through to the end of Brazil when it came out. Now with my theater in my home, I can stop a movie halfway through and continue on another night. Maybe someday I'll get to that dismal second half of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But I doubt it.

 

[OliverK]

Doctor Dolittle is not one tenth as compelling as My Fair Lady or The Sound of Music or that 1964 Disney film you hate which is about the same length. It's also aimed more at younger children, who have notoriously short attention spans. The Ten Commandments runs 220 minutes and the time flies by, but some movies drag at 90 minutes. Who was it who, when asked how long a given movie should be, replied, "How long is it good?"

In my experience not everybody thinks that The Sound of Music is ten times more compelling than Dr. Dolittle and in fact many people especially in Europe rather dislike it so as always taste in movies is a tricky thing.

I agree that Dr. Dolittle is too long for a childrens movie but I honestly do not think that it really gets much worse towards the end, the whole thing just doesn't have a very good story. Myself I might as well marvel at the production values for a little longer so for those of us it is nice to get more movie for the same money

 

[B-ROLL]

I just received my copy of DD and did a quick check and the PQ is amazing Kudos to FOX for the transfer and TT for releasing it

 

[MatthewA]

My Fair Lady is not really a children's film; their aren't any in it outside of a few playing on a maypole during "With a Little Bit of Luck." And what Alfred P. Doolittle proposes to Higgins based on a misunderstanding of his intentions would essentially make him a pimp; Eliza was not naive to this implication when she said "I sold flowers; I didn't sell myself." But it getting a G rating from the MPAA upon reissue makes one forget that. When Fox still had the home video rights, they tried to sell it as a "family feature" on VHS just as they did with The Sound of Music.

Perhaps Doctor Dolittle didn't need to be more than 2 hours and 15 minutes, like The King and I was. The love story seemed superfluous here though "At the Crossroads", which was covered by Bobby Darin and Petula Clark (was she actually considered for Samantha Eggar's role?), is one of the better songs in the film. They also tried to appease civil rights activists by writing out the character of Prince Bumpo who was present in an early draft of the script. I even heard stories about everything from eco-terrorism to the real animals biting Rex Harrison. But there was just so much pre-release bad karma against the film that it was just never able to shake it off, no matter what.

And speaking of 1964, that happened to be the year the baby boom ended and the last year before they started escalating the number of troops sent to Vietnam. That put other musicals at a disadvantage because fewer children were being born. That was also the year the sugar industry started a propaganda campaign similar to that of the tobacco industry. Compared to its predecessor that glorifies it, Doctor Dolittle is, literally, an "eat your vegetables" musical. That made it kind of a hard sell to some of the people who usually do tie-ins with these kinds of movies; how is a fast food restaurant or a cookie company supposed to build an ad campaign around a movie with a song called "The Reluctant Vegetarian"?

Who was it who, when asked how long a given movie should be, replied, "How long is it good?"

Good question. That is something you take on a case-by-case basis. I respond to that with another question: who gets to decide how long a movie should be? The inevitable fallout from this is that subsequent musicals that would have benefited from the roadshow release model got cut down to general release length preemptively in noticeable ways. Bedknobs and Broomsticks was the culmination of everything the Sherman Brothers had learned in a decade and a half at Disney from staggering success to equally staggering failure. They knew they had something and they hoped the post-production battles that crippled the two prior musicals wouldn't happen again, but they did; they cut a whole reel of the film that formed the emotional core of the story (and the motivation for the love story that was also part of the second book). If that wasn't enough, the re-issue cut another reel that constituted the mechanics of the plot! Luckily they weren't stupid enough to throw it away, save one song that only exists as audio and still photos, and they put it back together again…only to take it apart because screw you. What other reason could there be? Criterion is releasing another film David Tomlinson appeared in, Tom Jones, in both the theatrical and (slightly shorter) director's cut, perhaps Bedknobs will get an official release from Disney that includes the 139-minute restored cut as an option.

With Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Bricusse and Newley, learned from the failure of Dolittle by structuring as a smaller-scale musical closer in length to The Wizard of Oz and Song of the South, and was shot outside the US to save money. It wasn't a huge box office hit but there was less money riding on it. And this time Newley just co-wrote the songs without actually being in the film.

 

[Jimbo64]

Just found some time this morning to watch this disc and I have to agree with all the others, it is amazingly beautifully in both sight and sound. My hat is off to TCF and TT on this release!

 

[Jim*Tod]

Who was it who, when asked how long a given movie should be, replied, "How long is it good?

I think it was Louis B Mayer but I could be wrong.

 

[DonovanCampbell]

Who was it who, when asked how long a given movie should be, replied, "How long is it good?

I think it was Louis B Mayer but I could be wrong.

And Roger Ebert famously wrote that no good movie is too long and no bad movie is too short

 

[PMF]

Who was it who, when asked how long a given movie should be, replied, "How long is it good?

I think it was Louis B Mayer but I could be wrong.

And Roger Ebert famously wrote that no good movie is too long and no bad movie is too short

Roger Ebert's contributions to film were above and "Beyond" reproach.

P.S. The "Doctor" is in.

 

[Eric Vedowski]

From the book "The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood" by Max Wilk (1971)
"According to John Cromwell, who made six films for David Selznick (more than any other director), Selznick was never afraid to make long films when other, less venturesome producers would make them short. He would quote Nick Schenck, that veteran showman, who, when asked how long a film should be, would shrug and reply, "How long is it good?"
Also a July 1957 news story mentions that the comment was from when Selznick asked Schenck how long the MGM version of "David Copperfield" should be.

 

[PMF]

From the book "The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood" by Max Wilk (1971)
"According to John Cromwell, who made six films for David Selznick (more than any other director), Selznick was never afraid to make long films when other, less venturesome producers would make them short. He would quote Nick Schenck, that veteran showman, who, when asked how long a film should be, would shrug and reply, "How long is it good?"
Also a July 1957 news story mentions that the comment was from when Selznick asked Schenck how long the MGM version of "David Copperfield" should be.

Although I do believe that Selznick wanted the film to be titled as "David O. Copperfield"