Sometimes it seems as if Disney's mild, crowd-pleasing live-action comedies of the '60s have become an unlikely touchstone for many big-budget comedies of the late '90s. In addition to the abundant remakes (Flubber, That Darn Cat, The Parent Trap), a number of films, like last year's Liar Liar, borrow heavily in tone and content from Disney's '60s material, while adding a generous amount of scatological humor to appeal to today's jaded youth. Like Liar Liar, Dr. Dolittle takes place in a pleasantly antiseptic suburbia in which all secondary characters are broadly drawn and instantly recognizable, and all children are big-eyed waifs traumatized by the absence of their workaholic fathers. And like most live-action Disney films of the '60s, a benign cosmic quirk serves as a catalyst for not only tomfoolery, but also an important moral. The cosmic quirk in Dr. Dolittle is that Eddie Murphy's workaholic title character regains his ability to converse with the animals, a gift he abandoned during childhood after his father (Ossie Davis) discouraged his boyhood flights of fancy and put his beloved pet dog to sleep. Murphy's rediscovered talent at first disorients him, but ultimately serves to reawaken his lost idealism and draw him closer to his neglected family. Dr. Dolittle doesn't really have a primary plot, relying instead on a number of weakly drawn subplots involving Murphy's relationship with his family, his attempts to save a suicidal tiger (voiced with surprisingly effective pathos by Albert Brooks), his growing friendships with a smarmy dog (Norm Macdonald) and a sass-talking guinea pig (Chris Rock), and his clinic's plans to sell out to an HMO. Director Betty Thomas (Private Parts, The Brady Bunch Movie) once again shows a remarkable talent for crafting enjoyable fare out of iffy material, and while Murphy is stuck playing second fiddle to the film's menagerie of nutty animals, he makes an engaging straight man. Dr. Dolittle isn't as sharp or consistent as Murphy's The Nutty Professor, but it's an amusing, lightweight diversion.