Post by StevePulaski on Jun 30, 2017 23:50:37 GMT -5
Rock-a-Doodle (1991)
Directed by: Don Bluth
Directed by: Don Bluth
The suave and sensational singer Chanticleer in Rock-a-Doodle.
Rating: ★★
Even when drawn and rendered in perhaps the drabbest color palette of his extensive filmography, Don Bluth's timeless animation carries the weight and majestic qualities of a cartoon. It has that "squash and stretch" style of animation where characters' movements are dramatically exaggerated and their voices seem to compliment their lanky motions by being pitched ever so highly. Bluth specialized in this sort of format, and it aided him incredibly well following his departure from Disney in the late 1970s, where gems like All Dogs Go to Heaven, The Land Before Time, and An American Tail all prevailed and succeeded alongside the animation empire.
But when Rock-a-Doodle came around in 1991, it spelled the first of many blows to Bluth's career as an animator and director. It would start in the form of Rock-a-Doodle's inception and simultaneous materialization being a long, checkered pattern of delays, frustrated animators, reshoots, and edits following poor test-screenings. When it was finally released in North America in April 1992, as opposed to Christmas Day 1991 when it was initially planned to be released, it garnered negative or indifferent reviews and fell way short of its $18 million budget. It spelled the end for Bluth and collaborator Morris Sullivan's joint studio under 20th Century Fox and sent three of Bluth's pictures to be distributed through a Hong Kong company known as Media Assets, where films like Thumbelina and The Pebble and the Penguin made Rock-a-Doodle's meager box office earnings look like record-breakers.
Finally, the blemish Rock-a-Doodle and the aforementioned works left on Bluth's name in the industry was marginally wiped away by Anastasia, the 1997 cult favorite that occurred when Fox not only allowed Bluth to come back but also opted to give him another animated studio in which to work and release films, Fox Animation Studios. The success of Anastasia apparently put the conglomerate in good faith to let Bluth helm a $100 million animated effort known as Titan A.E., and I'm sure we all know how that played out and the effects that still loom over Bluth like a persistent rain-cloud to this very day.
Moreover, Rock-a-Doodle, an oddity that now lives on in the form of online-forums devoted to nostalgic cartoons and eBay auctions that presently command outrageous prices for the original MGM DVD. It's exactly what it sounds like and that's unfortunately is not much. It's a slight, barely hour-long project that plays like an after school animated special moreso than anything that would even been deemed as appropriate for a full-price, theatrical release. Its first misstep is in profiling a very fun, exciting, swaggering rooster named Chanticleer (voiced by pop country great Glen Campbell), a rooster whose duty it is to make the sun rise every morning with his infectious crow, before sidelining him to a thankless supporting character in his own film.
Yes indeed, after the evil Grand Duke of Owls (Christopher Plummer) exposes Chanticleer for a fraud by proving the sun rises without his help, all hell is unleashed on their unassuming farm by having torrential rainfall burden the farm until further notice.
It's after that discovery that the film interrupts itself by switching to a live action format where a young boy named Edmond is having this story read to him, a bizarre narrative inclusion that's absolutely needless. With that, Edmond (voiced and played by Toby Scott Ganger) is sucked into the novel as a tiny, cuddly kitten, saved by a bloodhound named Patou (Phil Harris) within moments of arriving in animated land. The two, in addition to their magpie pal Snipes (Eddie Deezen) embark on a journey to nowhere rather quickly in order to find where the disgraced Chanticleer has scurried off to in hopes they can stop the downpour on their farm.
Because Edmond was such a squeaky, incessant character and Patou was such a groggy, uninteresting one, Snipes provided most of the laughs, at least for me, throughout Rock-a-Doodle. He operates at a Bugs Bunny-like pace with a Daffy Duck-like edge, which I found very likable, and even uproariously funny during a scene where Snipes plays a game of "chicken" with another driver as he operates Patou's vehicle. At least I think it was Patou's, but I very well could be wrong. Rock-a-Doodle moves so quickly so often that it's hard not only to keep track of characters but keep track of situations. In only an hour's runtime, you wouldn't think a film of this nature - and the previously stated circumstances - would be at times so difficult to follow with characters not always easy to keep track of, but quite the contrary - the film moves so fast so often that an additional MPAA warning/disclosure should've been released saying the film had the ability to cause whiplash.
It's also worth noting how drab and decidedly muted Bluth's color palette is here. Even a darkly comic, socially relevant animated effort like Animal Farm had more color to its otherwise grim premise. Rock-a-Doodle never feels as bright or as vibrant as its premise and characters would suggest, and the only real points of the picture where this doesn't manifest into a noticeable concern is when Campbell's Chanticleer is wailing out buttery vocals and throwing himself around with Elvis-esque movements and poses. But other than that, Bluth's film is dim and often dingy, with a plot that's paradoxically simple yet complex given the way the film's seven (!) writers try to over-complicate the story and muddy what would serve your average three or four-year-old's rainy day quite fittingly.
A fun and fluent animation style and a rockin' Glen Campbell song unfortunately don't do much to buoy what is a largely mediocre animated film, and with new, flashy technology well on the way to being ready to use for state-of-the-art animated films and equally high-tech, pioneering film studios, the game was getting more competitive and demanding than something like Rock-a-Doodle could provide. Keep in mind, at the time of release, Pixar's Toy Story was a mere three years from release and Disney had already released Beauty and the Beast, a film that, I'd argue, serves as one of the first times parents turned their heads collectively at animation's ability to captivate adults as much or more than their children.
Rock-a-Doodle's history outshines its overall product, and it will live on through those like me, who just can't accept the history as the end-all-be-all of a film and must see the final product in order to be completely fulfilled.
Voiced by: Glen Campbell, Toby Scott Ganger, Christopher Plummer, Phil Harris, Eddie Deezen, and Sandy Duncan. Directed by: Don Bluth.