From the looks of the trailer, I expected this movie to be a lot of fun to watch, and from the rather positive reviews I read, I guess I expected a little more from this movie. The movie wasn't bad, and was fun, but I may have left it thinking more of it had I not seen the trailer or read the review in the newspaper that day.

The effect of hearing the animals "talk" is really neat and it makes many people see the animals as humans. The whole basis of the movie is the ability to talk to animals in English, and hear their replies, which makes it hard to take seriously as more than a dumb type of comedy. The movie was fairly well-aimed at kids, but had enough crudeness and sexual references to make parents cautious about taking their young kids. In fact, there were no children in the showing I attended. The studios should try making some cute, enjoyable children's movies that have good humor and a good story without crudeness. It seems that these days, a movie is made, and they have to go back in and say, "Where can we put some potty humor in here?" If a movie must have crudeness and potty humor, then the studios should forget making it for kids, make it have an R rating, and give the older folks who like this sort of thing what they want, and stop trying to make something that is in a category between these two.

At least Dr. Dolittle didn't give mouth-to-mouth to a rodent in this one! But, we do get unpleasant reminders in this movie about how women can be when they get upset ("You can sleep on the couch") and how the current generation of "teenagers with attitudes" can be when they get all wrapped up in their little cell-phone and headphone worlds. I had a group of these sitting to the left of me in the row I was in at the theatre. They were talking and putting their feet up on the seats in front of them. Of course, this theatre attracts the worst audiences of any theatre in Huntsville or Decatur. The daughter in Dr. Dolittle 2 (along with the girl who gets killed in the theatre in Scary Movie) are good representations of the average teenage patron at this particular theatre (attitude, behavior, cell-phone).

Dont' get me wrong. I guess I'm being a bit too negative in my review, but there were plenty of laughs, and the audience seemed to enjoy it.

The presentation left a bit to be desired. There were misalignment problems on three of the screen's edges, one of which showed a very jagged aperture plate edge, with fading on the others (fading out 6 inches to a foot from the screen edge). Several flat trailers were played at the scope setting, stretched horizontally, before the movie started. The staff there are too lazy to do flat/scope changeovers.
Brightness uniformity was poor, with the top 1/8 of the screen and the lower right corner being significantly dimmer than the rest of the picture.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Although this sequel is fairly predictable it is entertaining in much the same way that films like 'Look who's talking' are. The central idea is the absurdity of babies, animals and other living things that can't talk being able to talk.

The plot has something of a greenie basis - native forest being cut down by evil loggers and threatening the habitat of native animals. No particularly new ideas here.

Although some jokes are a bit lame in general the film kept me entertained. I wouldn't stretch the friendship to a further sequel however.

Verdict: 3 stars out of 5

cheers Peter