The Robert Downey Jr movie Seth Rogen compared to a “scam”
The ever-smiling, ever-chuckling on-screen face of Seth Rogen is so ubiquitous with the best comedy movies of the 2000s and 2010s that it is sometimes easy to forget that he has played a key part in writing many of them, as well as offering his brilliant acting talent to them as well.
The likes of Superbad, Pineapple Express, This Is The End and the more recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem all received the Rogen pen treatment. It is clear that his notoriety extends far beyond his acting performances, including the admittedly impressive The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Neighbours.
As one of the most esteemed writers in Hollywood, it’s only natural that Rogen has had countless scripts arrive on his desk in desperate need of a rewrite. When Rogen appeared on the Howard Stern radio show, he noted how films like 2020’s Doolittle, starring Robert Downey Jr, which he had been asked to work on, appear like scams.
“Some movies are like scams,” Rogen explained. “It’s like buying blueprints to a house that looks nice, but when you try to actually build the house, it doesn’t stand up properly. That is a thing that happens with films, and I recognise it sometimes. Where I will see a movie and be like, ‘Oh, they lied; whoever wrote and directed this movie lied.’”
He continued: “They made it seem like they were selling the studio an actual, functional film, but they did not. They sold them like the schematics of a movie that, when built, does not hold up to stress testing. I’ll only say this because it was reported, and I’m going to tread lightly because I am close with many of the people involved, but I did that on the Dr. Doolittle film.”
Rogen and Neighbours co-writer Brendan O’Brien had been asked to work on Doolittle to make it funnier, but neither could commit to the project. The film is based on the title character created by Hugh Lofting and is mostly based on his 1922 book The Voyage of Dr. Doolittle, with a screenplay by Gaghan, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand and a story by Thomas Shepherd.
The cast was absolutely littered with talent and saw the likes of Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, John Cena, Tom Holland and Ralph Fiennes, to name but a few, join Robert Downey Jr, but the film, despite a positive commercial run, was released to negative critical reception.
Continuing to explain his ideas on being asked to rewrite bad films, Rogen said, “It’s like, on the grand scale of positions to be in as a writer, it’s a cushy position to be in. Stakes are low for you personally in that role, which is nice. But it’s also like, you want to help! I like movies, and I like the actors in that movie, and I don’t want anyone to not be happy with the movie.”
“Universal, who made that movie, have been very supportive of me and my career and made a lot of our movies,” Rogen signed off. “They were having problems with the movie and were calling in people to help kind of get to the bottom of it.” But sadly, it looks as though no one managed to save the final product.
