Robert Downey Jr. explains why ‘The Shaggy Dog’ and ‘Dolittle’ were the ‘most important films’ he’s made in 25 years

Christopher Rosen
·4 min read
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Few actors have enjoyed as much success as Robert Downey Jr. in the last 15 years. The unofficial leader of the Marvel Cinematic Universe played Tony Stark in numerous blockbusters and helped turn the franchise into the one of the most lucrative in the history of Hollywood. But ask Downey if “Iron Man” or “Avengers: Endgame” were the “most important films” he’s made in the last two decades, and the two-time Oscar nominee will say no.

Speaking to the New York Times, Downey said the two projects he’d point to as having an outsized impact on this stage of his career are a pair of poorly reviewed kids’ movies: 2006’s “The Shaggy Dog” and 2020’s flop “Dolittle.”

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“I finished the Marvel contract and then hastily went into what had all the promise of being another big, fun, well-executed potential franchise in ‘Dolittle.’ I had some reservations. Me and my team seemed a little too excited about the deal and not quite excited enough about the merits of the execution. But at that point I was bulletproof. I was the guru of all genre movies,” Downey said. “Honestly, the two most important films I’ve done in the last 25 years are ‘The Shaggy Dog,’ because that was the film that got Disney saying they would insure me. Then the second most important film was ‘Dolittle,’ because ‘Dolittle’ was a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity.”

Directed by Stephen Gaghan (an Oscar winner for “Traffic” and the director of “Syriana”), “Dolittle” was initially shot in 2018. But the project went through numerous reshoots and reconfigurations during its lengthy post-production process. It finally arrived in theaters in January 2020 and quickly flamed out. By the time the coronavirus pandemic had started in earnest, “Dolittle” was available via on-demand services. 

Downey produced the movie with his wife, Susan Downey, and told the Times the stress Susan was under to make the film into something that could be released was high. But the issues with “Dolittle” quickly led to a career reset of sorts for Downey, who explained how he used the time after the flop to work on the acclaimed Netflix documentary “Sr.” and also find his way to Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”

“After that point — what’s that phrase? Never let a good crisis go to waste? — we had this reset of priorities and made some changes in who our closest business advisers were,” Downey said. “And that whole time, my dad was passing away, and as an avoidance mechanism, I decided to send crews over and get his thoughts on his winter years, and that turned into ‘Sr.,’ probably the most important thing I will ever do, which was being able to become part object and subject within a piece of ‘content.’ Which is what it was but to me was meaningful. Then old Chris Nolan calls, and getting to see the spartan, almost monastic way he approaches this art form, it was like going to the other side of the moon. So I guess my answer to your question is, I’m a dedicated martial-arts student, and it is great to spar with someone who is more dangerous than you.”

“Oppenheimer” is out in theaters on July 21.

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