Amigos inseparables

I've been told by a lot of people that this movie is the first of the mediocre entries (except Anastasia) in the early/late 90s that caused Don Bluth's career to go downhill, but as for me, I think I actually found this along with The Pebble and the Penguin to be very decent. Why?

Well, I will admit, the story was weird and predictable and has a lot of flaws that went nowhere despite it being supposedly charming. The characters were good. Edmund was okay, but nothing special, Chanticleer and the others were very decent, but the Grand Duke of Owls' henchman and the fox guy that wants some money for using Chanticleer to sing for the audiences were not that interesting. I think that the best character throughout the whole movie is the Grand Duke of Owls himself voiced by Christoper Plummer (who previously voiced Henri the pigeon in An American Tail) since he was so intimidating and very threatening which makes him one of the best non-Disney villains ever.

The songs were forgettable. The first song in the beginning was surprisingly good, but some of them were forgettable due to their uninspired lyrics.

There were several inconsistencies like the Grand Duke's breath contains magical powers and the rooster can sing while bringing the sun with his cock-a-doodling voice. It's weird, but that's not saying much.

And that's it for Rock-A-Doodle. Is it a weird movie like The Pebble and the Penguin? Yes, but unlike A Troll in Central Park, it's not a bad movie for it's worth watching for the kids. For adults, however, they will have a hard time viewing this.

6/10

In all honesty, I never saw this as a child. Perhaps that accounts somewhat for why I don't enjoy it very much now. Unlike many other children's films which have plots that people of all ages could appreciate, this was contrived and full of holes that you could "drive a John Deere tractor through", as Chanticleer would say. The songs were lackluster and all sounded the pretty much same, and the kid that played Edmond brings a whole new level to bad child actors. I did have a few good laughs though, mostly due to the good ol' Patou, so I can't rate it too low. Overall, if you didn't see this as a kid, you more than likely wont like it now.

6/10

First off, I have to say that I really like the idea of Rock-a-Doodle. The basic story of the rooster having to save his farm from eternal darkness and rain by crowing the sun up could have made for such a great movie. But I feel that, as it was, it wasn't nearly as good a movie as it could have been.

A huge part of my problem with this movie was the main character, Edmund. This kid/cat is so darn annoying. His speech impediment got very old very fast, and it just felt like he was trying way too hard to sound cute. Also, as another reviewer pointed out earlier, he belabored to death the fact that he was "too little" to do pretty much anything, which became irritating.

It was also bothersome that this movie couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a full-blown musical or not. The Chanticleer/King songs were fine, because they were part of the whole singing rooster story. But it seemed that the other random songs were pretty unnecessary. The owls' songs were bad enough, but did they really feel the need to have the bit with the bouncer toads' song?? These random musical numbers felt like they came out of some particularly bad Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. If they really wanted to make this movie a musical, they needed to have some real full-length songs instead of those short musical snippets given to the villains.

But by far, my biggest problem with this movie is that it's just not very good at storytelling. It was fine that Patou (Phil Harris in his last role!) narrated the story. However, at times, they relied too much on the narration to tell us things instead of showing us. This is especially true in the whole Goldie subplot. Patou told us that a) Goldie was a lot smarter and nicer than she seemed at first and b) that she was really falling for Chanticleer although she was only supposed to fake it. It really would have helped Goldie's character development if there had been scenes where she was gradually acting smarter and nicer. And the movie would instantly have been better, I believe, if there had been a scene showing the moment where Goldie knew that she was in love with Chanticleer for real instead of just having narration. As it was, it felt like Goldie was just tacked onto the movie so that Chanticleer could have a love interest.

There's a good movie somewhere in Rock-a-Doodle. And I won't deny that it was a special part of many people's childhoods. However, for the reasons above (as well as others I don't care to bore you with), it just didn't live up to that potential, and turned out to be just another mediocre-to-bad kids' movie.

The rooster on the farm, Chanticleer, has to sing every morning for the sun to rise. One morning, he is stopped from singing and the other animals discover that he's a phony - the sun rises anyway. He becomes an outcast and runs away to the city. However, the animals discover that this was a mistake, because the sun stops coming up and rain, which causes a flood, begins instead.

Somewhere along the way, cartoons and Disney became almost synonymous. And yet, Don Bluth has forged ahead, with "American Tail" and "Land Before Time", among many others. This one, though forgotten by some, is beloved by others. Personally, I think it is just as good as any Disney film of the era, and you have to love the voice casting of Glen Campbell.

If it hasn't already been done, someone ought to release a retrospective blu-ray set of Bluth's golden years.

Rock-A-Doodle is a movie that some say is the start of Don Bluth's streak of bad films until Anastasia was released, but to me, it sounds like an underrated gem. Telling the story of a boy named Edmond, a boy turned into a kitten by the Duke of Owls, he has to help the other farm animals bring back Chanticleer, whom they laughed out, as their farm is in danger of flooding.

Now, the movie is seen as a box office bomb, and one of the reasons why is executive meddling. Originally, there was not going to be any live-action segments, but MGM saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a successful film that combined live-action and animation, and decided they want a piece of the money pie it was making. Also, a lot of scenes were cut or edited for being "too scary for kids", either because of notes for test audiences or done to avoid a PG rating (the test audiences notes being mostly because Don decided to take their advice after All Dogs Go To Heaven was negatively received for its dark content). The result was a different movie that strayed far from what Don originally planned, and to me, that could be one of the reasons that caused it to bomb.

But despite those changes, the movie is still good. It still has some dark scenes that is a trademark of any Don Bluth film, the characters are memorable, and the music is good, as the country music songs are actual country music instead of the stuff we have today that masquerades as country music. This is a film work checking out.