I sat down to watch the 2008 movie "Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief" immediately after having just watched the 2006 movie "Dr. Dolittle 3". However, I have to say that this movie from writers Matt Liebermann and Kathleen Laccinole just wasn't really as good as the predecessor.

Sure, "Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief" was watchable for what it turned out to be, but director Craig Shapiro just didn't really manage to turn the script into something as wholesome as the previous movie. Don't get me wrong here, because "Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief" was still a watchable movie, but it just lacked that particular something to make it outstanding.

The problem for me here, was the script, as I found it to be somewhat restrictive. The writers didn't really take the storyline and the potential and let it go to its full potential. So the narrative in "Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief" felt somewhat on a leash, pardon the pun.

It was good, though, to have cast members from the previous movie return to this fourth movie in the franchise and reprise their roles and voices for the animals. That definitely added something to the movie. The acting performances in the movie were good.

My rating of "Dr. Dolittle: Tail to the Chief" lands on a four out of ten stars.

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.

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.