The “crisis” movie that “reset” Robert Downey Jr’s career
It’s hard to escape the well-documented lows of the career and life of Robert Downey Jr, just as it is easy to acknowledge the remarkable highs. But while he’ll often be tainted with the brush of addiction, it can also be stated that the actor serves as a reminder of the kind of comeback that is possible with courage and the right kind of help from others.
After coming through in the 1980s with performances in Less than Zero and Chances Are, Downey suffered a career drop amid his ongoing drug dependency but eventually made a stunning comeback in the mid-2000s when he performed the role of Marvel superhero Tony Stark in Iron Man, which might be considered one of the most important moments of his life.
Interestingly, though, Downey Jr puts his two most important movies down as a pair of rather surprising picks. Rather than name the moments that the actor was able to revive his career, say in the likes of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Iron Man, or even one of his earlier roles like Short Cuts, Downey Jr instead chose one of “crisis” and another of “insurance”.
During an interview with EW, the actor noted: “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.” The Shaggy Dog is Brian Robbins’ 2006 science fiction fantasy family comedy, a reboot of the 1959 movie of the same name.
Downey Jr stars alongside Tim Allen, Kristin Davis, Danny Glover and Philip Baker Hall in the movie telling of a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney called Dave Douglas, who transforms into a Bearded Collie after being bitten by a magical dog. It was the movie that showed the world that Downey had moved on from his addiction and was ready for the next phase of his career.
The actor went on to add, “Then the second most important film was Dolittle, because Dolittle was a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity… 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.”
The 2020 fantasy adventure Dolittle saw Downey Jr play the titular speaking-to-animals Doctor Dolittle alongside Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Emma Thompson and a swathe of other stars. However, the film was not well-received by critics, who said it was boring and unfunny. Equally, it was a box office bomb, losing Universal Studios between $50-100million.
The effect the poor film had on Downey Jr was that it changed his outlook on how he ought to perceive prospective projects. Evidently, he felt that he had been misadvised on the film, and when the perception and commercial performance of it was poor, he vowed to take more care of his career, making it one of his most important movies.
