In this remake of a 1967 family film starring Rex Harrison, Eddie Murphy plays a successful San Francisco doctor with a wife and two daughters. The small hospital where he works is about to be purchased by an HMO and his colleagues (Oliver Platt and Richard Schiff) are nervous about the big deal. Their anxiety turns to panic when they find Dr. Dolittle administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a sick rat. It turns out that his childhood gift of talking to animals and hearing what they say has returned to him.
Betty Thomas directs this intermittently funny comedy where Eddie Murphy plays second fiddle to a street-wise dog, a feisty guinea pig, a wise owl, an alcoholic monkey, a near-sighted horse, a dog with a compulsive-obsessive disorder, and a suicidal tiger. The moral of Dr. Dolittle is follow your bliss no matter what anyone else thinks.