Doctor Dolittle/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Harsher in Hindsight: Just watching, or rather HEARING, the Crocodile Hunter get his arm bitten off might be even more uncomfortable to watch now that he's dead for real.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Profound. One example from the first book: Prince Bumpo of Africa asks the Doctor to make him white, so that the Sleeping Beauty won't run away from him.
    • The revised edition has him asking to be able to grow a lion's mane in order to make himself brave.
    • On the plus side Bumpo is depicted more positively than many white characters and certainly is no sillier then they are. Unlike Matthew the Cat's Meat Man Bumpo is a useful member of the crew of the Flounder in Voyages of Doctor Dolittle and the narrator, nine year old Stebbins, is flattered to be treated as an equal by a prince and an Oxford student. Bumpo's skin color is not an issue.
  • Values Dissonance: Although a Friend to All Living Things, the Doctor seems to have no trouble with eating sausages, even in front of Gub-Gub the pig. Then again, many real life pigs have no problem eating pork products themselves.
    • Averted in the 1967 movie. The Doctor is a vegan.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Doctor_Dolittle/YMMV?oldid=438498"