Jock

(2011) Jock: The Hero Dog COMPUTER ANIMATION/ FAMILY ADVENTURE

There's is just so many things wrong with this movie I think I'm being way too generous upon giving this movie 40%. It's the story about Jock the Hero dog narrated by acting veteran, Donald Sutherland while living in Africa. I really hate movies where I'm able to see things to remember at the beginning but are not addressed about it later. What that means is that is that it loses focus in regards to the story. I mean , although the computer animation is not that great, my first focus always regards in the rhythm and flow of it's story. The movie opens with Jock as a young pup, who was ridiculed and cast off aside by his older and bigger brothers in which on one instance he's squeezed out of a food bowl. They also call him 'runt' because of his size in comparison to his older siblings. A young explorer happens to be by and he asks what kind of pup he would want to adopt from this African tribe, and one of them suggested him to take the young 'runt' who was blatantly taken by a vicious bird. At this point, I'm wondering, how come dogs can converse with some animals and not be able to converse with others, for which the movie never answers. Anyways, after the runt manages to escape from this nasty bird, he is then saved again from a drowning by the young explorer who eventually gave him the name Jock. Jock, the dog who's able to converse with the chicken who really looks like a rooster promises his mom and dad that he is going to look after him as well as serve as it's guide on his so-called journeys. I also don't like the trend here where all the bad guys all have Australian accents whereas all the good guys all have perfectly English accents. This young explorer is looking for gold and needed a dog to protect and guide him to his advantage since he's gullible. Now, at this point I've already watched half way, is when this movie started to lose me, is when young Jock goes back to see his mother again, except that their is no mentioning of the whereabouts of his father or his other brothers. It's like they were only important to serve only one purpose, and that was to be part of a story for young Jock. His mother does eventually get killed by a leopard defeated by Jock from a stroke of luck but instead of being saddened about it, I was still quite baffled about how it came to this at the first place. I remembered one of my other problems I had with this movie is the very same problem I had with "The Lion King", is the fact they would pick a particular group of animals to be bad making other groups of animals to be good. In Kimba the white Lion, he becomes king in a spawn of weeks and years, but in the Lion King, it almost appears that he became king only in a week. .

Assuming that this film was aimed at children and seeing the vitriolic bile that others have used to review this film I felt that I should give a brief defence of this film.

Animation was at times basic in parts yes but beautiful in others the human characters were better than the animals for the most part, there the criticism ends while not my cup of tea meaning its south African content of which I am not that knowledgeable I took the film for what it was a children's adventure as for the morals that it teaches that those other critics deem so important I thought there were only two good beats evil and the little guy can sometimes beat the big one.

As for a critique of the film I asked my children 4,6,9 and 12 years old who were all glued to the film throughout. Consensus, they all enjoyed the film with no criticism at all. My two year old son was a little scared of George the Baboon, not Gorilla as he was wrongly called by the first critic.

It was in keeping with a children's film when there were some fighting scenes with some violence I thought it was tastefully done with blood and gore completely avoided so as not to distress a young audience. All in all you have to be young at heart to critique a children's film or flaws become chasms. My wife and children spoke I listened and observed mixed their opinions with mine and rate the movie at 6 out of 10.

My opinion don't expect the earth but don't be afraid to get the sweets and popcorn out and watch it with the children on DVD.

Jock is an iconic South African story. It has all the right values of courage, bravery, loyalty and adventure to make it a must watch for young kids. Set in the bushveld of South Africa in the time of the Gold Rush in the late 1800's, the characters are from all over the world. They were in a strange land with wild animals and other adversities , seeking their fame and fortune. the story picks up on the adventures of Jock, the runt of the litter and the Transport rider who is gifted him by the local Zulu Chief. The technical quality is not as consistent as it might be but children are not critical like adults and so almost universally seem to enjoy watching this heart warming film. There is good music and the voices of Bryan Adams, Donald Sutherland, Bishop Tutu and Helen Hunt make for a good enough movie for all to watch.

As a masters student in animation, it pains me to watch this film. I loved the original storyline and the renditions told to me as a child but this is missing the essence of the story: the companionship between a man and animal, their adventures in the bush and how the underdog triumphs above all. The Jungle Book, done in 1967 achieves this far and beyond this movie. Story is king, the animation is bad but if the story was any good then they could have gotten away from it- an example of this being "Hoodwinkd".

The character design and models are poor and unappealing and there so many supporting, useless characters, such as the rooster. The animation is floaty and cringe-worthy, none of the 10 principles seem to be taken into account which places this movie technically behind Snow White, done in 1937. Fitzgerald is possibly the most unappealing animated character I have ever seen, worse than Gurgi in the Black Cauldron. The pitiful voice acting makes me sad, for something that is so 'proudly South African', they literally chose every other accent to be the voices of the characters (including a put-on French accent??).

The sad thing is that the emphasis of this production is completely wrong: hair, fabric and other simulations should be the last added extras, and redoing the whole film because Stereoscopic films were starting to become trendy is a terrible waste of money and time.

To say "but my kids enjoyed it" is a sad excuse for this film, they probably enjoyed the TV-watching experience more than anything else and with so many fantastic 3D animated features done before this production even began (The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille), there are far better things to take your kids to see where you don't have to suffer through in the process.

The creators say that the success of this movie depended on the distribution and marketing of the film, which was difficult coming from SA and out of their hands but the real reason why this movie failed was due to the lack of skill, reference and focus. For how could they have taken the most loved South African classic and failed so badly?

This was the worst movie that I have seen in 2011, how could this movie be named "Jock". Not only is the animation totally crap but the story is completely different from the novel. This novel is based on a true story and even the 1992 movie was closer to the truth than this movie. I was totally disappointed at this movie that starred the voices of people like Donald Sutherland, Helen Hunt and Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu. The best version of this movie is a South African production that was made in the 80's, based most accurately on the true story. Please find the novel and read it to see the real story, this is one of the best South African legends written.