Review of Rock-A-Doodle (1991) by James R — 25 Jan 2019

Boy is it "strange movies people forgot existed week" or what. Rock-A-Doodle is a Don Bluth film that quite frankly I kind of forgot existed. It's definitely not the most popular one compared to the other Don Bluth films of the 80's such as An American Tail (1986), The Land Before Time (1988) or even All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989).

I actually owned this movie as a child and re-watching it now it brought back a lot of memories, but man nostalgia even couldn't save this one. Don't get me wrong I still have a very strong sense of nostalgia for this movie (the music is excellent still), but man this movie isn't that good.

Rock-A-Doodle follows the story of a young boy named Edmond (Toby Scott Ganger) who is being told the story of a rooster named Chanticleer (Glen Campbell) who left his farm after he failed to call the sun up and everyone called him a fraud.

As Edmond listens to this a storm happens and his mother puts the book down and everyone in the house assists with getting the live stock and such to safety (they live on a farm and this is all weirdly shown in live action).

Before you know it the evil Grand Duke (Christopher Plummer) comes alive from the pages (he's an owl by the way) and turns Edmond into a Cat. But before the Duke can get rid of Edmond in comes the other farm animals from the story Patou (Phil Harris) the dog, Snipes (Eddie Deezen) the nervous bird, Peepers (Sandy Duncan) the smart mouse and some other animals.

The owls keep circling them all, but are held off while the animals blind it with a flashlight. With dwindling supplies Edmond realizes they must travel to the city to find Chanticleer, so that he can raise the sun and rid the barn of the evil owls.

So, yeah thats the story. There's more, but truthfully this is already going on long enough. The animation here is kinda bad I won't lie. At times it looks great such as the opening sequence, but the city sequences look really bad.

The story is predictable of course and there's an underlying message about believing in yourself, but I guess two things stuck out. Chanticleer isn't actually that likeable. Yes he sings very good, but man I never caught back on to caring about him.

Second Edmond is just kinda really annoying. He comes off as just really naive which is the point, but man did it bother me. I know that sounds silly and for the most part this is aimed for kids, but hey just a gripe.

Overall, I enjoyed the music here, but for everything else this one really still falls flat. I would say keep it in the memories if you remember this one and for anyone else just stay clear.