I loved the Doctor Dolittle books as a kid. Some of them were pretty dark, gloomy affairs - I still have some haunting memories of Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake . And I guess I also kind of enjoyed this lumbering musical, too, because it had animals in it. Looking at it as an adult, the thing is close to unbearable, with charmless actors (Rex Harrison is a treat in light comedies which require rapier wit and wordplay, but the guy could NOT sing a note, so why did they cast him in these big '60s musicals?), terrible music and even the special effects are not all that impressive (the giant snail looks like something I can imagine being wheeled onstage in a pantomime, not at the climax of a megabucks movie). Avoid this one!