Eddie Murphy plays it to the family safe audience again with the return of his man who can talk to the animals in Dr. Dolittle 2.

You'd be forgiven for finding it surprising that the first film was successful enough to warrant a follow up. But, in an age where you can get a film funded based on the concept of "Hey, I know a joke and I'll work for cat food", I suppose that having Eddie Murphy tied to the project and a bunch of cutesy talking animals to make the kids squeal with delight seemed like a good idea for a fast buck.

I don't know how the box office saw the success of this installment, but I'll be incredibly suprised if there's a number three (unless it's a straight to video job and Eddie gets paid in dried cow pats). Yet, I'm happy to say, even I found this one (as with the first film) a bit of silly fun to be had.

This time round, Dr. Dolittle is summoned into the forest by the henchmen (or is that henchanimals?) of The Beaver and asked to save the forest home of countless animals from logging. If the forest goes, all the animals will lose their home, and that just ain't nice kids, is it? Booo! Loggers are evil! So, Dolittle is persuaded to defend the rights of the animal world in court, but the only way to stop the logging is if he can get two endangered bears to mate. Problem is, one is a wild bear, the other is a captured performing bear with no survival instincts other than what conditioner to use on his fur - oh, the other problem is that he has just three weeks to make it happen. So can Dolittle get the bears to "get it on" (ask your parents what that means, kids!) or will all the animals be made homeless and be forced to go live in Woomera Detention Centre?

Ah, talking animals, ya gotta love 'em! Like the first film, they get most of the best lines, with Eddie more or less playing the straight man. It must be hard to be upstaged by CG effects and trained bears, but he wears it well. If you're in the market for a film to plop the kids in front of (they'll love the farting bear) or just want some easy going harmless entertainment between boring television shows, then Dr. Dolittle 2 serves up a nice light slice of entertainment. When the film's over (and it is a bit short) then give the extras a run through, that'll keep you busy for a while longer.

Quite a nice and pleasing looking picture has this DVD (but then again, so do most DVDs these days). It's presented here in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is 16:9 enhanced. I was surprised by the use of 2.35:1, but I guess it makes better use of the forest settings, and it works well. The picture quality is not quite "fantastic", but it comes up with the goods easily enough to make your time in front of it enjoyable. The picture does looks like it is slightly soft on detail, but the forest scenes look nice, with plenty of warm colours and textures rendered well. The animals, with the CG overlays enabling them to "speak", look great. There's plenty of detail with the fur rendering on screen well, and it will suck the kiddies (and some adults) right in.

The audio isn't too exciting, it's never going to make your demo disc list, but it does the job required with only one flaw which drew my attention. Even though the characters are clearly understandable (except for just a few quick lines of dialogue from some accented creatures) there are a few moments where louder portions or speech - from the humans - distorted quite audibly. It wasn't too bad, just surprising to hear from such a recent movie transferred to DVD. Aside from this, the sound is fairly good, being clear, with a little surround use but nothing too in your face. Kids will like it, you'll find it just fine, just don't expect it to jump through any hoops.

And then we have the entensive extra features list. This time, rather than the bare bones effort of the first Dr. Dolittle DVD, it seems they've thrown in everything they could find. Okay, take a big breath in and let's start with the Director and Co-Producers Audio Commentary, Making Movie Magic with Rhythm and Hues which is a far too brief five minute look at how they made the animals talk, a more substantial Making of Dr Dolittle 2 feature which is about par for the info and entertainment course as these things go, then Bear Necessities: A Kid's Guide to Grizzlies which at around eight minutes is okay and gives some real info on the bears and Wild on the Set with Tank the Bear which looks at the main bear in the movie and how they got him to do some scenes, running for around ten minutes... and breathe out. Phewww. But we're not done yet, kids!

Moving along, we have trailers for Dr. Dolittle and an upcoming animated flick called Ice Age (which is a great trailer, very funny), extended scenes with two scenes, one of which has a director's commentary, storyboard sequences with around ten minutes of board to film comparisons over five different scenes, a music video and promo ad for the soundtrack and finally the theatrical trailers and TV spots for the movie, with two trailers and a whopping 12 television spots included.

You wanted extras? You got extras! Are you happy now?