Plot: Chanticleer is a rooster who makes the sun go up for this farm by crowing/singing. But when the Grand Duke of Owls, uses one of his henchmen to make him forget to crow so that the sun would come up on its own, he is kicked out of the farm and left to find work in the city. The Grand Duke of Owls takes advantage of this, as he plans to keep the sun from ever coming up again, causing eternal darkness and rainfall, threatening to flood the land. This is all told via storybook in live action, to a boy named Edmond, whose family is apparently hit by the same rainfall as the animals in the farm. Edmond calls out Chanticleer's name in hopes that he will crow again before the flood makes it to his home, but the Grand Duke of Owls comes instead to punish Edmond by turning him into a kitten so that The Duke can eat him. But the animals of the farm come to save him and tell him that Chanticleer actually did raise the sun, and they need him back to do it again.
I want to start of saying that I already knew about the story and some other elements to this film just from having seen the Nostalgia Critic review for this movie, which is why I never saw it before. But I recently had the urge to just say "screw it" and watch it anyway, so here we are. But I must say, as bad as I expected it to be, I didn't think that it would be so bad that I would view it to be almost just as bad as A Troll in Central Park - heck, even worse in some elements.
Like A Troll in Central Park, this film is littered with plot holes. But the problems with the story here are more confusing to say the least. First off, the claim that Chanticleer did raise the sun when they thought he didn't is bull crap. The rest of the film seems to stand on its claim that his voice raises the sun, but we do see the sun come up without him crowing when he's kicked out of the farm. And that is only the first out of three if not four major problems with the story. The second one you can guess would be how the early event of the film is apparently happening the same time Edmond's mother is telling him the story via story book. I can go on and on about the other problems, but these two in particular are the most confusing. A Troll in Central Park had problems about what was happening in certain areas in its story too, but they weren't so bad that you can be confused on how the story is set up.
Now as much as Doug Walker covered so much about this movie as the Nostalgia Critic, there's two elements that I don't think he covered quite as much as he could have. The first element is the characters. Actually, Walker recently did an interview with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, and they talked about how, unlike their films back in the 80s, their financiers for their films in the 90s gave them less control with their product and would demand changes that make things simpler and dumbed-down, and it really shows here. They try to make it so inviting to be in an adventure with Edmond and the farm animals, but they come off more like cut-off boards of characters. The prime example is Edmond, who needs to believe that he's not helpless despite his small size. Not only is this a story line that has been done before, but personally, I don't think it really paid off. Maybe I missed something, but it didn't look like there was a real resolution with Edmond's fear. I think he was suppose to conquer his fear by supporting Chantacleer, but even if that was the case, it doesn't really add up to the obstacles he was facing prior. The only character that appeared likable in any way was the dog, Patou. But that's only because he was voiced by Phil Harris; the guy who did the voices for Little John and Baloo in Disney's Robin Hood and The Jungle Book respectfully.
As much as I was aware of how bad the soundtrack was for Rock-a-Doodle, I didn't expect the majority of the music to be songs to be really, really, short. I knew beforehand that a lot of the music was pointless - and they most certainly where. But given that this is an animated musical made by Don Bluth, I imagined that they would at least be around 2-3 minutes long like his other films from the 90s - i.e. Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park, Pebble and the Penguin and Anastasia. Granted, some of them are at least 2 minutes long officially speaking, but even then, they don't have much weight, because the dialogue or the action covers most of them up. The rest of them were no longer than 40 seconds or so.
And that's my review for Rock-a-doodle. It has a plot with major problems, characters that are underdeveloped and uninteresting, and had a lackluster of songs that aren't even needed most of the time. If you grew up with this film and have a sense of nostalgia to it, fair enough. But otherwise, this is one Don Bluth that may not have pissed me off like A Troll in Central Park, but is almost just as bad if not worse in some areas, that this is one Don Bluth film that you should skip.
Rating: 10%
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