If there's one good thing that can be said about this movie it's that at least Kyla Pratt is dedicated to the character of Maya Dolittle. She debuted as the nerdy animal girl in the first Dr. Dolittle film when she was 12 years old, and ten years later here she still is, playing the character. That is dedication to your craft, and I can respect that.That being said, this is an awful film. Pratt is actually one of the better actors in this whole lackluster borefest and even she isn't great, merely slightly above average. Though I mostly blame poor writing. None of the jokes are funny, the conflict is laughably out there - and not in a good way - most of the characters have no motivations, backstories or even characteristics. All the animals especially are just bad, being either stereotypical, rude, full of lowbrow humour or all of those at once.The plot is one of those B-movie comedy plots mainly written to give room for all those wacky characters to spout wacky dialogue and to get into wacky situations. But, as already established, both the dialogues as well as the characters are poorly written and the plot itself is the poorest of them all. One of those three can be poor, and the two might be able to pick up the slack, so you can only imagine what happens when they all fail.Still, there's really nothing actively harmful in this film. You can see that at least some of the actors believe in their roles and it has a good, if a bit clichéd, message it tries to convey. I guess that if you honestly have nothing else to do, this will pass the time, but I wouldn't recommend it. Kyla Pratt sure is cute, though.

I'm absolutely hypnotized by the stories that stories make. I often think of stories having their own agency, doing whatever they need to do to survive. That can take one of two paths I think.The first is the path I normally pay attention to. A story can coax and guide it's tellers and receivers toward paths that matter, that penetrate and dissolve bits of us. These matter, and it's not just interesting to look at what they are and why they affect us, but also how they became so.And then you have other path, which you could consider the quantity over quality model, where a story evolves so that it can simply be repeated. These reflect rather than make worlds and they thrive on a parasitic energy from other stories. I think that is what we have here.The Dolittle story in it's basic form has been around for eons I suppose. In films I first encountered it as something which could carry some simple endearments spiced with enough humor to entertain. But that form has no juice today.So it evolved, attracting Murphy and support to become something more colorfully funny, adapting a raunchy persona. But the fertility fades on that as well.Now I suppose that there is a branch of evolution for all stories where they end up a Saturday afternoon kids babysitting material. And I suppose that this story already was headed in that direction. But the specific form is interesting at least. It has moved to the "black" theme part of the story ecosphere.It's a comfortable, secure niche that guarantees longevity and repetition because it links to an audience that uses such stories to define self.The story form has these elements: the focus is on women and how they make the world right. In every case, there is an environment in which men live and which has a dysfunctional dynamic, needing the common sense of women, common sense that is deeper in the African American woman than anywhere.The chief character is always the same. Here she has poor grades and a focus on "social skills." she seems inept at first, but her pluck allows a situation in which she can apply her "emotional intelligence" to the problem. It invariably is the result of some family dynamic which incidentally explains deficiencies in our heroine.She does her stuff and the world is made right, to the befuddled who lack this gift. In this case, it is the president that needs help, and by implication the soul of Africa (literally) that needs to be saved.An interesting thing here is that the story includes multiple references to endangered species and preserved ecostructure in the context of personal (meaning in this sense, animal) personal inadequaciesSurvival folded into survival.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

I actually registered to IMDb just to comment on this extremely bad movie. I've seen all the movies I've got at home about 5 times each (we've got 500 or so), and I'd rather watch either one of them a 6th time, than recommending anyone watching this movie even once.The plot was just silly, even for a child. Maybe a 4-year old could enjoy all the cute animals, but really, everything was just overly "cosy", stupid and there was no real meaning of the whole movie, at all.Examples: (This is where the SPOILER starts, not that it matters in this movie anyway.) They're looking for the runaway dog, and Miss DoLittle asks the President's daughter if there's any place she could have gone. She answers, no, just to get some cheap emotions squeezed out of the audience. Then, after a few seconds, after the audience gave up all hope, she says "No, wait, there's this place where me and the dog used to hang out at all the time". And all I could think was "Duh, why didn't you just say that before?"... The stupidity-levels are at the same level as the joke where the man asks if his friend can see that tree over there, and he answers "No I can't, because the forest is in the way".Another example is the "mean intern girl", who first is very rude towards Miss DoLittle. When Miss DoLittle asks the "nice intern boy" for help, when the intern boy and the intern girl are working, she refuses to help them and the boy gets mad and says that there's more important things in the world than her career. Now, this is a girl who's been struggling all her life to work at "an international level by the time she's 30", but after her partner says that ("There's more important things than your career") she goes out and helps them to look for the dog like a good girl should! All I can say is wow. Just, wow.I like cosy movies, I really do, but when they're sleazy and sickening sugar-sweet like this one, it just gets silly. I'll never watch this movie again. In fact, I'm going to delete it completely (haven't done that with any movie I have, not even Dead or Alive).I'm not sure if I think the acting was really bad though; I'd have to see these guys in a movie with an actual plot to fully pass that judgement, all I know is that you can't make a tasty stew with rotten vegetables and sour cream, so, working from that experience, I won't judge the actors by this movie alone.Summary: This movie is bad, really bad, for whatever the reasons may be.

This movie was bad enough for me to want to come onto IMDb and submit my debut review, so here it is: When faced with a family comedy, you'd hope that at least one member of the family audience would laugh a few times. At least. Unfortunately, only two or three times during this movie was there an attempt at humour just funny enough to ALMOST make me smile, or indeed to make the five and seven year olds I watched this movie with almost lift out of the stupor they were thrown into by the horrifying monotony that was Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief. At these moments of near-humour, I would hope that perhaps the movie was improving, but then my foolish optimism would fizzle out again as the movie sank back into its dreary dialogue and dull acting. Of course, the acting isn't something that would be such a big importance in this kind of movie, but here it is so terrible that it is one of the straws that broke the camel's back. I believe this was the fourth film in a series. That fact alone speaks volumes. It was boring in almost every respect and not worth anybody's money or time.