Rock-A-Doodle (1992)

Featured Audience Ratings

• AJ V

  
  I saw this when I was a kid, and I liked it then, but I don't really remember it now. Maybe I'll watch it again sometime, it has a very cool voice cast.

• Bently L

  
  18% Rotten?! In my opinion, Rock-a-Doodle is one of Don Bluth's most underrated work. I've been watching this film since I was like five years old and I still enjoy it. The demented owl gave me the heebiejeebies as a child. Don't make fun of me, but I have feelings… More
  18% Rotten?! In my opinion, Rock-a-Doodle is one of Don Bluth's most underrated work. I've been watching this film since I was like five years old and I still enjoy it. The demented owl gave me the heebiejeebies as a child. Don't make fun of me, but I have feelings for the characters. The scene where the club that Chanticlier performed announced that no cats, dogs, birds, and mice were allowed make me feel bad for our heroes. See? Proof that I feel for the characters. This movie also shows how corrupt the world would be if populated by animals. Just take a look at Pinky the Fox! He's got "jerk" written all over him. Also, the scene where the owl keeps Chanticlier hostage under that creepy tree stump still gets me today. Don't make fun of me for this but I think Chanticlier's hen girlfriend is freakin' hot! She's far more sexier than the animatronic hen at Chuck E. Cheese restaurants. Well that's what I think of "Rock-a-Doodle", haters!!! "Jeepers, I'm furry!"

• Daniel M

  
  This is one of many examples of a film being so bad it’s unintentionally hilarious. Don Bluth’s Rock-a-Doodle is poorly written, poorly acted, has terrible musical numbers and no directorial control whatsoever; its only redemptive feature is that it follows through with its nonsense… More
  This is one of many examples of a film being so bad it’s unintentionally hilarious. Don Bluth’s Rock-a-Doodle is poorly written, poorly acted, has terrible musical numbers and no directorial control whatsoever; its only redemptive feature is that it follows through with its nonsense and makes you laugh a couple of times along the way. The story, ripped off from a Geoffrey Chaucer story about a rooster who fights a fox, makes no coherent sense. Not only is the idea of a cartoon world encroaching on the human world not original, but it's executed in such a confusing way. If the whole of the human world has been turned into watercolours, what has happened to the parents out trying to protect the farm? Do they know that any of this is going on? And if so, why don’t we see what happens to them? Even if this all takes place in Edmund’s dream, surely they’d turn up at some point. Then there is the acting. Glen Campbell's singing is passable, as you would expect, but his delivery of lines is otherwise pretty mediocre and lifeless. Toby Scott Granger is terrible as Edmund, though to be fair he has to work with a script which is both incomprehensible and lazy; he does, in the words of the Nostalgia Critic, “make Jake Lloyd look like Haley Joel Osment”. The supplementary characters are also largely forgettable; the only thing you remember about the magpie and the mouse is that they’re incredibly annoying. And as for Goldie’s singing: it’s like a strangled canary, a complete nails-on-the-blackboard experience. The only vaguely good performance is Christopher Plummer as the villainous Grand Duke of Owls, and even that hardly stretches the boundaries of what is possible, even as children’s animation goes. The musical numbers in this film seem to have been included to make the film more light-hearted and family-friendly. But almost no effort was expended in the writing of these pieces, either lyrically or musically, and so they come across as completely laughable. Not only are they completely superfluous to the plot, but they never develop into anything meaningful. At least in other musicals - like Plummer’s most famous work, The Sound of Music - the songs go on long enough to be actually construed into meaning something. Here they are just quick, highly surreal interludes which at best will make you laugh as you watch them on a loop and at worst just confuse and piss you off. There are also several segments in this film which are either inappropriate or just plain absurd. The former is best shown by Edmund’s initial remark upon being turned into a cat: “Jeepers! I'm a furry!”. For those of us who are old enough to have some idea of what this means - think niche gentleman’s literature - this is just plain wrong. The absurd sections of the film include the ‘flashback’ (or whatever it is) where we enter into Edmund’s mind for a few seconds, or the bizarre sequence where Hutch - the Duke'’ aggressive pint-sized nephew - attempts to do away with our heroes in the trailer and ends up being electrocuted in a spinning bed. You watch the sequence, which runs like it’s in fast-motion, and come away with only one thought in your mind: “What the hell just happened?”. In fact, that’s the impression this whole film will leave in your head. In his efforts to keep up with both Disney and the industry as a whole, Don Bluth has lost all grip on reality. In the wake of both Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Little Mermaid - which managed to be both innovative and box office hits - he has thrown everything he has at this film and, as expected, ended up with a god-awful mess. It's sloppy, inexplicable nonsense, resoundingly weird and inadvertently funny, and should only be watched as kickback for a good laugh.

• Anthony L

  
  Cock a doodle don't!

• Jason S

  
  I actually liked this flick when I was a kid.

• Naughtia N

  
  I used to watch this movie all the time when I was a kid, actually I loved all movies made by Don Bluth. This movie was much fun, has cute characters and wonderful music. It's a story about a rooster (Chanticleer) who is much appreciated on the farm he lives in, he sings every… More
  I used to watch this movie all the time when I was a kid, actually I loved all movies made by Don Bluth. This movie was much fun, has cute characters and wonderful music. It's a story about a rooster (Chanticleer) who is much appreciated on the farm he lives in, he sings every morning so the sun willl rise. But one morning some owls prevent him from singing and all the other animals on the farm see that he's a phony. Chanticleer then runs away to the big city and to everybody's big surprise, the sun doesn't rise again after Chanticleer has left. Then they go on a journey to find him and get him back to the farm.

• Sunil J

  
  I don't know why I loved this movie as a kid but there is a weird cuteness to it.

• Jessica v

  
  A fun, made-for-TV kid's classic, at least for me. If you can find it, it's a fun romp - definitely a throwback. ;)

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