Simply A Masterpiece

Really Surprised!

Fresh and Exciting

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

As a fan of Don Bluth since I was a kid, I think this is probably where his work started to decline. What's really weird about this film is just how, well weird it is. I mean, it's about a singing rooster that resembles Elvis that is able to bring the Sun up. The weirdest thing is that at one point the Sun comes up without him singing. He then leaves because the animals realize they don't need him to bring the Sun up. It turns out they do. So...why did the Sun come up that one time? It's very dumb. Also, the main kid character in this is really not a good actor. His voice is pretty annoying and I guess I can't blame him since he's just a kid.Now, I did like the animation in this. Come to think of it, ALL of Don Bluth's movies have had good animation. That was something that was always consistent and in a good way. There is also an interesting subplot where a chicken named Goldie falls in love with the rooster, but it sadly doesn't go anywhere. Still, I will praise the visuals and I honestly thought this was something pretty unique for Don Bluth. Wow, owls have really gone downward since their portrayal in "The Secret Of Nimh". I guess the movie itself is harmless enough and doesn't teach bad morals or anything. It's just mostly boring and uninteresting. **

This has to be one of the worst movies ever made. I don't care if it was made for kids; it is excrement. Let's go through this travesty, shall we?1) Wow, I was not aware that apparently owls EAT such animals as cats and pigs! No, you've really seen it all when you see a pig scared of being eaten by an owl. Wouldn't it have made more sense if the villains had been hawks or vultures? Okay, then they wouldn't have hated the sun so much, but having owls wanting to eat pigs doesn't make any more sense!2) Story logic: Everyone believes Chanticleer makes the sun rise every morning, but then they see it come up without him, so they think he's a fraud. But then it turns out it DOESN'T rise without him. So what the hell? Why did the sun come up without him that one time? Is it able to come up by itself a single time, but then needs him to continuously do so? I saw this movie when I was 7, and was confused by that.3) Okay, so the sun can't come up and it's always night; why does that make it rain and flood as well?4) The live-action scenes are shot so terribly! Seriously, they look like a bad home movie.5) Edmond can't act, but if you think about it; his entire storyline is really unnecessary. You could just cut him out, cut out all the live-action stuff, told the whole movie as just a straight cartoon, and still have the same story.6) With all respect to Phil Harris and his long resume of animated voice work, I think he's one of the most annoying narrators in film history. "Well, shucks. Just imagine if one day the sun just didn't come up, but went back down." Then he just KEEPS ON TALKING, sometimes over very dramatic scenes.Patou: (narrating) If Edmond wanted to bring Chanticleer back to raise the sun, the Duke was going to have something to say about it. Grand Duke: Kittens are more digestible. Patou: (narrating) Young Edmond was about to have the most amazing adventure he'd ever dreamed of.Just SHUT UP! You don't need to tell us that the Duke is mad, we can see that. You don't need to tell us that Edmond is about to go on an adventure. Just let us enjoy the movie!!7) The climax: after going on this "amazing adventure," it all comes down to a stupid climax of convincing Chanticleer to crow, but he doesn't feel like it. So they chant his name over and over until he feels like it. Couldn't they have come up with something more dramatic than that?8) And what does his crowing do? Make the Duke shrink. I don't quite understand that logic.So in conclusion, the story is badly conceived, the execution is even worse, and the result is a mess of a movie.

I never heard of this 1991 Don Bluth film until about five years after its release. I was about ten years old at the time, and saw "Rock-A-Doodle" when it came on TV. I was fairly impressed with the movie upon my first viewing, and watched it more than once shorty after that. Over a decade later, after not seeing it for a long time, I finally rented a copy on video to see what I would think of the movie after all these years. This time, I didn't enjoy it so much, but that wasn't surprising.Chanticleer is a musical rooster who sings early every morning on the farm. The other animals are convinced that he has to do this in order for the sun to rise. However, one morning, Chanticleer is distracted by an intruder! The rooster manages to fight this intruder off, but the incident prevents him from singing at the usual time, and the son still comes up without him! The other animals on the farm who once respected the rooster now begin to ridicule him, so an upset Chanticleer leaves the farm and goes to the city. After his departure, however, the sun stops rising in the morning, and it begins to rain nonstop! The animals on the farm now realize that Chanticleer really is needed for the sun to rise, so several of them, including Edmond (a young boy who has been turned into a cat by an evil owl), set out to find the singing rooster in the city, before the flood gets so high that everyone drowns! Finding him in this big city won't be easy, and the owls will make the mission even more difficult! If you've looked at IMDb's main page for "Rock-A-Doodle", I'm sure you've noticed that it has a fairly low rating, which I can understand. Watching the animated feature again recently, it really didn't mean much to me at all, and I found it very forgettable. However, by this point, I was probably WELL past the age group that this film was aimed at. Watching this movie when I was around ten years old was somewhat enjoyable, and I might have enjoyed it more if I saw it back when it was first released in 1991, when I was around five. So, I can understand why this movie is so highly criticised, but those who have seen it as adults and don't like it should remember its audience.In my opinion, "Rock-A-Doodle" is one unmemorable peace of animation, with a rather bland plot. Some of the characters are poor quality as well (especially Goldie, with her voice). However, who am I to judge? I'm sure that a lot of kids (especially younger ones) would strongly disagree with my thoughts on the film. For that reason, I do recommend this Don Bluth movie for kids who are into animated adventures. For adults, I do not recommend it, unless you have any kids to watch it with. If you want an animated feature that can strongly appeal to all ages, there are plenty of those for you to choose from, but remember, "Rock-A-Doodle" is not one of them.

I don't know what Don Bluth was thinking when he made this silly, nonsensical animated musical about a singing rooster, but I know what I'm thinking: "Why?" ROCK-A-DOODLE isn't as depressing or dreary as Bluth's previous ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN, but it's not much better.The film tells the story of Chanticleer, a barnyard rooster with a golden voice whose crooning -- sorry, crowing -- makes the sun rise every day. One morning, however, Chanticleer is attacked by a bully rooster; in the process he neglects his crowing duties and the sun comes up anyway. After being laughed at by his friends, the disgraced rooster heads off to the city. Then it starts to rain, and before long, all the animals are terrorized by both floods and the evil Grand Duke of Owls, who, it turns out, actually set up the whole thing simply because he dislikes the sun. In arguably one of the few memorable lines this movie offers, he also sneers, "I positively LOATHE rock and roll."Naturally, the animals head off to the city to find Chanticleer, who, by this point, has become a famous star dubbed "the King," with a greedy manager and a reluctant girlfriend, Goldie. If the animals can bring Chanticleer back to the farm, the sun will once again rise and the floods will stop. To prevent this, the Duke sends his clumsy (and unfortunately not very funny) nephew, Hunch (whose vocabulary mostly consists of rhyming with the word "annihilation") after the animals.The plot, such as it is, doesn't make the least amount of sense and is likely to baffle even the most intelligent of grown-ups. Working against ROCK-A-DOODLE as a whole, however, is the haphazard and confusing execution. It also suffers from the problem of a major identity crisis: on one hand it tries to be a simplistic fairy tale, on the other it attempts to be a musical parody of Elvis (Chanticleer's rock star persona and his songs are very closely modeled after the legendary singer, from the slick hairdo to the deep voice and the mannerisms). However, it ultimately comes across as a hodgepodge of ideas crashing into each other.Furthermore, the characters, in addition to being unattractively designed, are not particularly compelling. Chanticleer, while supplying a dead-on impression of Elvis Presley down to the voice and the singing (courtesy of Glen Campbell), is a two-dimensional lead. His barnyard friends, which include Patou, a droopy canine unable to tie his shoes, Peepers, a bespectacled and lisping mouse, and Snipes, a zany magpie, do little to emerge as anything memorable, although the first two are well voiced by Phil Harris and Sandy Duncan, respectively. Hunch, as mentioned, is unfunny, and useless. That leaves the character of Goldie, Chanticleer's love interest, who is supposed to be a tough girl that eventually falls in love with our hero, but the screenplay doesn't give her much to do. One suspects that she was included in this film just for the sake of a love interest. As for the Grand Duke, he's little more than your typical scary, nasty, scheming bad guy, despite having the voice of Christopher Plummer. And don't even get me started on where his supernatural powers (that enable him to grow to enormous size or transform anybody) came from.Where ROCK-A-DOODLE really falls apart is in its attempt to bookend the movie with live-action sequences. The idea is to include a real-life little boy, Edmond, as one of the story's major protagonists. Actually, he spends much of the film transformed as an animated kitten (a transition that feels very awkward and unnatural). And whining about how he is unable to do anything as a result of being small. Constantly. This subplot feels like it was tacked onto the story, hence one gets the feeling that it came out of nowhere.There are also two live-action/animation sequences in the movie, but unlike WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, they come across as very patchy and unconvincing--the real-life surroundings don't mesh well with the drawings, and it looks especially bad at the song and dance finale when the kid actor playing Edmond, Toby Scott-Granger, is brought back to the cartoon world. Speaking for the animation itself, it's pretty much below par, even for a Bluth production.Equally distracting is the narration that supplies most of the film. Phil Harris has a great voice and does a credible job (although some might find it strange that the dog is recounting the whole thing). The problem is that he narrates CONSTANTLY, even going far to chime in over some catchy songs sung by Chanticleer. Considering that this film is supposed to be a musical, having Harris chime in every two minutes proves to be very distracting. (The narration was apparently added on to prevent audiences from being confused, but why did they have to overdo it?)Probably the only things that come clean out of this mess are the voice work and the musical score by Robert Folk. Campbell, Harris, Duncan, Plummer, and squeaky Ellen Greene (as Goldie) all do the best they can with their characters, although Toby Scott-Granger's childish speech impediment does get in the way of his portrayal of Edmond (although considering how weak his character is, it's no surprise he doesn't give a memorable performance). The underscore, as mentioned, is also beautiful, far better than this movie has any right to be. T.J. Kuenster's dozen songs, on the other hand, are mediocre to bad, particularly the owls' Bach-style numbers, although the ones for Chanticleer are admittingly a lot of fun.As entertainment, ROCK-A-DOODLE is mostly harmless fare for younger kids. It has its funny moments, but anyone else older will find this to be uninspired and chaotic. Considering that this is from the director of THE SECRET OF NIMH, AN American TAIL, and THE LAND BEFORE TIME, its a disappointing endeavor.