Rock-A-Doodle

One of my favorite movies growing up was this Don Bluth classic Rock-A-Doodle. After such hits like An American Tail, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and The Land Before Time, I'm sure this is a perfect fit in the Don Bluthiverse.

Bluth, a former Walt Disney animator, had wanted to make a movie based on the story of "Chanticleer' since 1982 but could never come up with a good enough story. In 1988, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with its blend of live-action and animation, inspired Bluth to bookend his Chanticleer movie with live-action sequences. In the story, Chanticleer is proud to be the one to wake up the sun everyday so everyone can get a start to their day. Then one day, Chanticleer is unable to crow but the sun rises anyway. Ashamed and disgraced, Chanticleer leaves to become The King of Rock and Roll.

The movie was originally going to be released by MGM, but they were experiencing financial troubles and backed out. The Samuel Goldwyn Company picked it up and originally scheduled the release for Thanksgiving 1991. In order to avoid competition with Disney's Beauty and the Beast, the release was pushed back to April of 1992.

My Mom, in a rare case of wanting to be around my friends, had a small gathering of my friends for my birthday. She paid for the movie and ice cream for all of us. It was only four of us. I liked the movie, I don't know what my friends thought about it. I think I had the novelization of it and had a couple of the tie-in toys they had at Dairy Queen.

I had Edmond (the cat) and Peepers (the mouse).

Rock-A-Doodle did not recoup it's budget and, taking into account lackluster reviews for the movie, was considered a failure. It forced Don Bluth to sell his next three projects (Thumbelina, A Troll In Central Park, and The Pebble and the Penguin) to another production company. Neither project did well. Rock-A-Doodle did do well in home video sales.

Rock-A-Doodle stars Christopher Plummer as the Duke, an owl who wants to keep the sun down so he can be up all night and rule the world, and Glenn Campbell as Chanticleer. Additional voices are Ellen Greene, Eddie Deezen, Sandy Duncan, Charles Nelson Reilly, Sorrell Booke and Phil Harris in their last role before their deaths in 1994 and 1995 respectively, and Toby Scott Ganger in his first of only three film credits. Tom & Huck and Black Sheep are the other two. Rock-A-Doodle was written by David N. Weiss with original songs by T.J. Kuenster.

This logo is much better than what they use for the poster, VHS box, everywhere else...

The movie opens with narration, supposedly added because test audiences were confused by some parts and needed a hand to hold to walk them through the movie. The narration is by Phil Harris, who voices Patou, the dog. Harris, the voice of Baloo and Little John in Disney's The Jungle Book and Robin Hood, respectively, recorded lines for Baloo for the TV series TaleSpin. If this is how he sounded when he read for Baloo, it's no wonder he was replaced with Ed Gilbert.

The narrator begins to tell the story about how they almost lost the sun. He introduces our main character, Chanticleer, a rooster who loves to sing and loves to wake the sun up every morning.

A rooster having fingers is very unsettling and will be for the entire movie.

Chanticleer is beloved by all the farm animals who regard him as a hero. But one morning, before the sun rises, a stranger sent by the Grand Duke of Owls (what?) picks a fight with Chanticleer. While Chanticleer wins the fight, he misses his time to crow and the sun comes up without him. Now considered a fraud by who he thought were his friends (even Eddie Deezen scores off him), Chanticleer leaves to find work in the city. The sun then disappears, it starts to rain, and we cut to live-action.

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. Oof, that hair.

In real life, it's been raining for days, too, and it's flooding and causing problems on the farm where Edmond lives. Edmond is the boy ("Although he didn't look like this when I first met him," the narrator points out. Edmond's dad needs help reinforcing sandbags and getting animals into the barn which Edmond is too small to help with. Frustrated and wanting to help, Edmond opens his window and calls out for Chanticleer. Lightening strikes a nearby tree which crashes through the window and Edmond comes face-to-face with the Grand Duke of Owls, who is not too happy with Edmond.

I will admit, this scene is kind of cool.

The Duke and the other creatures of the night have worked long and hard making sure that Chanticleer never comes back and Edmond is ruining all of that. So, the Duke is going to eat Edmond. Finding kittens easier to digest, the Duke transforms Edmond into a cat (and the rest of the world into a cartoon). Patou leaps to the rescue, biting the Duke on the leg, and Edmond hits the Duke with a blast of light from a flashlight. Edmond and Patou become fast friends and the other animals arrive and invade Edmond's bedroom. They are on the way to the city to find Chanticleer.

Edmond (Ganger, center), with, from left to right, Snipes (Deezen), Patou (Harris), and
Peepers (Duncan).

Edmond knows how to the get to the city so they ask Edmond to lead the way. Edmond says he can't because he's now a cat and is too little. This becomes one the major lessons that kids are supposed to learn. You're never to small to help somebody. They goad Edmond into taking them, but are interrupted when water pours in from the broken window. Hopping into a trunk, Edmond, Patou, Peepers, and Snipes float off toward the city.

The Duke apparently has an organ that can shoot out bad weather when played
which is how they are keeping the rain around.

Meanwhile, the Duke and his other owls are singing about how Patou lives rent-free in their brain and how they will never let Chanticleer crow when Hunch, the Duke's henchman (and nephew?!) falls in to tell the Duke that he spotted Patou and the others floating down the river in a toy box. The Duke sends Hunch and his other owls out to "total[ly] annihilate" them which leads to scenes of owls holding a kitten down trying to drown him. That's a fun image for our children. Anyway, our heroes are able to fight off the owls using a camera (the flash specifically), wind up going down an aqueduct pipe which leads straight into the city and are now one step closer to finding Chanticleer.

Based on Snipes' reaction to the city, he's gonna get tore up!

Hunch, who believes they were sucked into an adequate pipe and killed, is sent back to the city by the Duke and given one last chance to kill Patou and the others or Hunch will be the one to be annihilated. In the city, our gang is having a hard time finding Chanticleer because no one in the city knows his name. He now goes by The King and is now a famous rock-and-roll star, managed by Pinky. The thing is, it's hard to be happy without any friends and despites millions of screaming fans, Chanticleer is lonely, something Pinky doesn't understand. But Pinky has an idea to make Chanticleer a little less lonely by offering Goldie, a chorus girl jealous of Chanticleer, an opportunity of a lifetime.

So lonely he's sucking his thumb.

We learn that Pinky is in cahoots with the Duke and the Duke orders Pinky to keep Patou and the gang away from Chanticleer and to reinforce the fact that the farm animals laughed at him and don't want him around anymore. The first plan Pinky tries is to just ban dogs, mice, birds, and cats from Chanticleer's shows, but he gives everyone a penguin costume, which our four protagonists acquire so it doesn't really work. Honestly, I don't understand it at all. Birds are 80% of your fanbase and penguins are birds. And you clearly aren't vetting who gets a penguin costume. I don't know. I could probably keep going talking about this, but I'm gonna move on.

Our friends try to get a note to Chanticleer, but the bouncers discover that they are a bird, mouse, cat, and dog and are now trying to capture them. Making their way on stage, they are able to get the note back and deliver it into Chanticleer's hand, but Pinky, who has been directing Goldie into becoming Chanticleer's girlfriend, shoves her onstage to start her number. She takes the note from Chanticleer and our friends know that they have lost him.

As Chanticleer and Goldie sing at his rooftop farm, Edmond tries to get his attention from a nearby building. Patou considers getting Chanticleer back to be a lost cause, but Edmond decides to talk to Goldie instead. They sneak onto a movie set and Edmond goes into Goldie's trailer where she freaks out because she's been told that Edmond is a bad cat. After being thrown out of Goldie's trailer, our friends are then captured by Pinky. Goldie sees the whole thing and realizes she made a mistake. First, after the last couple of scenes, I have to say Ellen Greene is bringing much more to this character than I swear they wrote. She is able to express so much emotion with her "dumb airhead" voice. Second, why does Eddie Deezen always play terrible characters? Here, he's a misogynist. Is it the voice? It's probably the voice.

While filming, Goldie gives the note to Chanticleer and tells him his friends are looking for him and are held by Pinky. Chanticleer refuses to make the movie, but Pinky doesn't want to lose his money and threatens to kill his friends unless he sticks around. Chanticleer and Goldie then steal the motorcycle they are using for the movie to head to Pinky's trailer to rescue his friends. Unfortunately, Hunch is trying to kill them and when Chanticleer comes smashing his way in, Patou hits him on the head with a frying pan knocking him unconscious. Because of of course. They steal Pinky's Cadillac to get away, but first they have to lose the trailer. Peepers unhooks the trailer from the car because Edmond is too scared to do it. Hunch pops one of the tires causing the trailer to lurch, trapping Peepers on the trailer and despite Edmond's best effort to save her, the trailer speeds off and crashes into a water tower. Edmond takes control and goes back to save her. They climb the water tower which starts to collapse and when it does, Pinky's helicopter comes in to safely catch our friends as they fall. Turns out Peepers was able to get ahold of the helicopter through the contrivance of movie magic and they all return to the farm.

Which is looking a bit worse for wear.

The others tell Chanticleer he has to crow, but he doesn't do that anymore. All he does is sing. He's forgotten how to crow. The Duke and his owls return. Edmond tries to lead everybody in a "Chanticleer! Chanticleer! Chanticleer!" chant, but the Duke uses his breath powers (did I explain that the Duke has breath powers that allow him to change people into things among other things?) to strangle Edmond. With Edmond now dead, Patou begins to lead the chant. The Duke uses his power to make himself bigger and turns into a tornado while the piece of land Chanticleer is stuck in begins to sink. Chanticleer begins to get his confidence? Voice? Crow? back, crows, and the sun starts to rise reversing the Duke's powers and making him smaller. Hunch finds him and instead of helping, begins chasing and trying to kill the Duke for all the abuse he has had to put up with over the years.

With the Duke gone, the sun starts spreading across the land. There's just one problem. Edmond is still dead and no one here knows how to solve death. When the sun hits Edmond, that changes him back into a boy which is one problem solved. There's still the matter of death though.

Peepers is way too into human Edmond ("He was a handsome little boy"). Peepers starts repeating his name over and over again and it turns out Edmond just hit his head and everything has been a dream. But the sun is out and shining so, maybe it wasn't just a dream...

Edmond welcomes Chanticleer back and rubs the cover of his storybook transporting him back into the land of this animated movie. Chanticleer and the other animals are reprising "Sun Do Shine", the opening musical number and credits fade in. When "Sun Do Shine" ends, it segues into "Tyin' Your Shoes" sung by Patou. There is a C-plot where Patou is trying to learn how to tie his shoes. He finally learns despite the vague instructions of "over, around, under, and through". I won't though. The B-plot, if you could call it that, is the group of animals left behind on the farm are being terrorized by the owls. They keep the flashlight on to keep the owls away, but the batteries die and they are down to their last two. Just turn the flashlight off. You don't need it on all the time, only when the owls are near. Also, all the water just magically disappears when the sun comes out despite non-stop heavy rain for at least a week.

Good lord, the credits are nine minutes long!

Edmond kind of sticks out among his animated animal friends.