Dolittle was released on Friday and unfortunately is getting panned by critics, currently rotten at 18% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer (79% at the audience score). There are some lovely words for Michael’s performance as Dr. Blair Müdfly, which you can read below:
Our reluctant hero [Dolittle] will have to voyage to both of the other locations that weren’t cut out during reshoots, and he’ll have to get there before the chinless doctor Müdfly (a delicious Michael Sheen, making a glorious meal out of table scraps) is able to find the magic whatsit for himself.
(…) the only wholly successful element of Dolittle is its villain. Michael Sheen plays Dr. Blair Müdfly, personal doctor to the queen of England and rival to the legendary Dolittle. Where Downey is fumbling with a clumsy Welsh accent and mawkish melancholy, Sheen is on fire, incensed by Müdfly’s jealousy and embracing this property’s camp past. With a severe goatee, bulging eyes, and a voice ever on the verge of breaking into a squeal of rage, Sheen gifts this fumbling film a surge of energy and hilarious pettiness. Perhaps the joke that proved the most silly yet satisfying is when Dolittle mutters that the man is a “chinless wonder,” then the cut leaps across leagues of open ocean to Müdfly’s warship where he’s looking through a spyglass and yelps, “I think he said something about my chin!” Sheen is the only one who seems to truly embrace what over-the-top fun this could have been. Bless him.
Then there’s Michael Sheen, who is known to sprinkle his patented Sheen® brand Luster Dust all over everything he does. His rival to Dolittle is the brilliantly bumbling villain: Dr. Blair Müdfly (pronounced Moudfly because of “the umlaut from the German”). Y’all, that umlaut almost did me in. I could not stop laughing. We must insure Michael Sheen’s well being immediately (and I do mean “insure” like with policies in the billions).
As the scheming Blair Müdfly, Michael Sheen is the one element of Dolittle that actually connects, in part because his performance is tuned into the ridiculousness of everything around him. Müdfly is one of the conspirators seeking to remove the Queen from power, and Sheen plays him like a live-action Snidely Whiplash
Some of the laughs come from the film’s villain, the nefarious Dr. Mudfly (Michael Sheen plays the role with a satanic beard and campy energy). Sheen can get a lot out of a line like “I shall continue to leech!” when describing his medical treatment for the queen.
The only human that feels close to fully realized is the villain, Dr. Blair Müdfly (Michael Sheen, having the time of his life), a former classmate of Dr. Dolittle. He is over-the-top evil but still relatable as a jealous Salieri, forever in the shadow of Dolittle’s Mozart.
The Globe and Mail (Rating: 2/4 stars)
On the way, they encounter Lily’s father, a pirate king played by the stalwart Antonio Banderas, and the evil Dr. Mudfly (a wonderfully committed Michael Sheen), a black-clad, goateed gadfly with selfish motivations to stop Dolittle and his band of zoological misfits.
From the entire cast and crew of Dolittle, just Michael Sheen, Jason Mantzoukas and Antonio Banderas can lay claim to enhancing it with their work. Sheen’s hammy villain and Mantzoukas’s deranged dragonfly manage to create the only laugh-out-loud moments
AV Club (Rating: C-)
Michael Sheen’s over-the-top performance as Dolittle’s sworn rival, the sputtering incarnation of medical mediocrity Dr. Blair Müdfly [is lightly amusing]. The key there is that Sheen is not taking his role even remotely seriously, and is playing for the amusement of the children in the audience rather than operating by a misguided faith in the power of one-liners or a myopic conception of his movie-star brilliance. Would that everyone else involved in this production had the same clarity.
812filmReviews (Rating: 2/4)
Dolittle only survives due to its villains. For one, Michael Sheen plays a wonderfully cartoonish foe in Dr. Blair Müdfly. Often self-conscious of his standing in relation to Dr. Dolittle, his pettiness adds a richness to a film that rarely discovers its center.
The Mary Sue (Rating: 3/5)
But the best way to describe this movie is madness. With a Michael Sheen performance to rival his Breaking Dawn laugh and Antonio Banderas being a hot king, the movie is very much a family adventure and one that should be approached with an open mind and heart.
On the first note: there are a few elements here and there that got a laugh out of the room, particularly moments from Michael Sheen and Kumail Nanjiani, who are the brightest spots in Dolittle. Sheen and Nanjiani feel like they know what kind of movie they’re in and they’re excited to be part of it.
Rendy Reviews (Rating: 1/5 | 26%)
If there was one person who managed to put a smile on my face throughout this damn mess was Michael Sheen. He portrays the main antagonist, Mudfly, Dolittle’s enemy who was always envious of his prosperity. He takes nothing but joy out of witnessing his downfall and hates him to an obsessive degree. Sheen plays this in such a joyous, upbeat, over the top manner that had me chuckling more than I thought I would. He’s the only human actor who is actually given direction and makes the most out of his presence.