Cinematic Disasters - Rock-a-Doodle

 

Awhile back I reviewed two of Don Bluth's many great films. With that being said it's time I review his...less than stellar works to say the least.

Rock-a-Doodle is a live-action/animated musical comedy film based on 1910 play Chantecler. The movie was produced by Sullivan Bluth Studios and Goldcrest and distributed by The Samuel Goldwyn Company. Rock-a-Doodle was written by David N. Weiss and directed by Don Bluth.

The story is a rooter named Chanticleer has the ability to bring up the sun just by crowing. One day he forgets to do just that, and all of the fellow farm animals think he's a fraud and Chanticleer decides to leave and become a rockstar in Vegas. However, a young boy named Edmond soon finds out that they truly need Chanticleer or the Grand Owl will rule.

My Thoughts

There's only one good bit of quality in this film, and that's the animation. Even when Don Bluth gives us a film with a terrible story, at least there's good animation. Doesn't make it a masterpiece, but at least it'll be easy in the eyes.

Now comes for the many negatives regrading Rock-a-Doodle, and that's it's predictable. Typically you can solve this problem by providing a very entertaining story. That's been done many times before, but the problem with this film is the story's not entertaining. I'll get into why later, but anyhow, because there's no entertainment factor, you're left with a movie you're either gonna want to end, or you're gonna pop it out of your DVD player and watch something much better.

With this being a musical you'd think we get some entertaining song, right? Well sadly no. None of the songs in this flick are good. The villains have quite possibly the worst villain songs I've ever heard for a group of bad guys. The best way to describe the villain songs is lame. One of their songs literally start with "tweedly-dee". I kid you not, that's actually how one of their songs start. If that doesn't tell you just how bad the music is in this, I don't know what will.

Since I brought up the villains I might as well tell how awful they are, and no, I don't mean that in a good way. What I mean is these are just the most overly generic villains ever. Not only is the main motivation for the Grand Owl is him and his buddies just can't stand sunlight, but the Grand Owl just hates Chanticleer's rock and roll. Yes, basically the Grand Owl is an angry grandpa you can't stand today's kids, especially their gosh darn rock music.

Now I'm gonna tell you Rock-a-Doodle's two biggest problems, and that's the ending, or lack thereof. Yeah the movie doesn't really end, it just kinda stops. It almost felt like the filmmakers came to a sudden realization and even they just wanted it to end. Not the best of signs if you ask me.

Finally I can get to the biggest problem and that's nothing is explained. This really circles back to what I said earlier about the story not being entertaining. And this is why, no explanation for anything. First off earlier in the movie, the sun rises without Chanticleer crowing, then it's revealed the Grand Owl tricked the farm animals into thinking that, but how? It's shown that sun indeed rises because of Chanticleer's crowing. So how did the Grand Owl pull that off? Never explained. Then we have the fact that the writers didn't how the world works. First we're lead to believe that it's all just a book that the mom reads to Edmond, but then the animals and such I guess come to the real world, or both us and the cartoon characters live in the same world? Or it was all just a dream Edmond had, or Edmond got pulled into the world of the book? I don't know what's what because the movie itself doesn't know. So this was a very structure less movie.

Rock-a-Doodle is just bad, plain and simple. I don't know why Don Bluth even wanted to make this, considering the hits after hits he wrote and/or directed previously. Another than really good animation, everything else is terrible. From the predictably to the world just being whatever.

My final rating is Awful.

Well I'm all done here. Come back on Saturday, Aug 27th for my review of the newest Sylvester Stallone film, Samaritan. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.