Rock Dog

So this movie was a little more than what I expected (Or just better than I expected).

It starts out with this cool 2D animation that tells the story of a sheep town being guarded by a kung fu dog being attacked by wolves. In order to keep the wolves from coming back he outlaws music, and of course his son Brody grows up wanting to be a musician so he goes to the big city to become a Rock Dog.

One of my favorite parts of the film is their concept of the rock park, a place in the city were musicians meet and perform. It's like a cross between Venice Beach and CBGBs. Really cool.

The animation was not that good nothing too great or unique, but I did love the story. The typical animation type of a animal that was met for one thing and is known for one thing, wanting to do something out of the norm, but that rock setting in which is goes over the clichés of Rock and Roll specifically that late 80s early 90s version in which the movie seems to be happening.

Plus a lot of real cool characters in the movie. My favorite being Angus Shattergood a cool cat voiced by Eddie Izzard who is the living persona of Rock and Roll.

My biggest pet peeve of the film is actually that the movie is really short. I mean really short. It was barely over an hour. Usually, when animated movies are that short they give us a animated short at the beginning of the film to make up for it. that did not happen this time. You can see the story coming to an end, and you think to yourself more is coming, but it does not.

So bland animation tells a great story so simple that it makes the movie seem short. For that I would wait for the DVD to come out to see it.

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It sucked lol it was just like 20 cliches compiled into one movie but it was funny. The best character was angus scattergood, i guess hes supposed to be ozzy osbourne. I liked it im looking forward to see how bad the next one it lol.

I saw the trailer for this, which played along with the trailer for Sing, which I think may have hurt the ratings for this partially. Both cliché movie ideas that BOTH turned out to be well done in the end.

I thought I wouldn't watch either, but did, but I do find I like this movie better than Sing- primarily because of Sing being another American Idol, Got Talent, etc reminiscent flick/show and piggybacking on that old hype. Rock Dog has clichés, but it's certainly more heartfelt and uplifting, you can't help but adore Bodi's cheerful attitude and blissful innocence.

(The last couple end songs were pretty good, too, which is also surprising.)

I give this movie a rating of 8 / 10 because I would have preferred perhaps a few different voice actors better suited and the animation models to have more variety within species- say, the crocodiles. Not that I expect it to be as diverse as the heavily funded Zootopia, which had each shown character/background character in the film with its own character sheet and specialized design/sculpt and even gait; I just wish there had been a bit more variation in some of the designs; it makes sense, I suppose, for the sheep to be over simplified to push the purposeful trope.

I digress. . .

It's a simple storyline that we've seen before with simple character models/sculpts, but it's heartfelt, sometimes comedic, with a bout of passion- it's a truly good feel movie that all ages can enjoy, I recommend it for a rainy day that needs a pep talk.

Coming from a big lifelong animation fan, 'Rock Dog' may not be on par with the best films of the best major animation studios (i.e. Disney, Pixar, Studio Ghibli), nor does it ever try to be or be anything more than it is.

It's also much better than especially anything from Video Brinquedo and, although to me critics do not deserve anywhere near the over-the-top bashing they get on the internet, 'Rock Dog' is another case of liking it much more than they did and going against the grain. 'Rock Dog' is less than perfect, but for the imperfections there are it has its heart in the right place, it knows who to aim it at and really tries to appeal to all ages and it doesn't try too hard or attempt to do more than it needs to.

'Rock Dog' may not be ground-breaking in story, a good deal of it is derivative, and some of the plotting concerning the villain's plan is a bit strange and takes away at times from the rest of the story. The film is also too short, if it were twenty minutes longer it would have fleshed out the slightly underdeveloped lead character Boni more and done more with the disapproving parent cliché.

However, the animation may not be mind-blowing or imaginative but it's colourful and detailed enough and at least the characters don't look ugly. The music is truly amazing and along with the supporting characters steals the show. In particular "Glorious", which lives up to its name.

Writing is witty and heartfelt and while the story execution is less than perfect it goes at a bright and breezy pace, is fun, is inspiring, is well-meaning and has a heart of gold that comes over movingly. Although he could have been better fleshed out more, the lead character is an easy to relate to one. Stealing the show though is the hilarious character Angus Scattergood, a character so rich in personality and so much fun he is worthy of a solo outing of some kind. Fleetwood Yak (nostalgic adults will have a good chuckle at this) is fun too.

Voice acting is good, with the best contribution coming from a note-perfect Eddie Izzard. JK Simmons is perfectly gruff as well and Luke Wilson is a likable lead. On paper, Lewis Black didn't seem right to me for a villain but he won me over, making Linnus a suitably formidable and somewhat cool villain. Mae Whitman is charming.

Overall, didn't love it but liked it better than thought. 7/10 Bethany Cox

I'm not really sure where all the negative reviews for this film are coming from. I am not the biggest animated film fan AT ALL, but I really found Rock Dog to be enjoyable. The music was fun (mostly thanks to Adam Friedman), the characters were funny and generally likable, the story was creative, AND my 2-year-old niece loved it. I do love music, so for me, an animated film about music was much appreciated. I highly recommend this one, especially for families. Not sure why others don't.