Don Bluth was one of the greatest directors in animation, originally coming from the Disney animation department working on films such as Sleeping Beauty, Robin Hood, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too and The Fox and the Hound, in the early 80s he directed and produced some of the decade's greatest animated movies, beginning with The Secret of NIMH, a movie that I have previously reviewed, but a movie that is excellent and so beautiful, it may be one of my favourite movies of the 1980s. Following that was An American Tail and The Land Before Time, before he ended the 80s with All Dogs Go To Heaven. Then immediately after that, came Mr. Bluth's lesser period. What happened? Where did one of the best animation directors go wrong and begin making movies that just weren't as good? Fellow animation reviewer Animated Antic did a marathon of Don Bluth's theatrical movies, so he probably has a better answer than I, but I'm curious if I can see the signs from the movie that began his nineties descent, nine-descent, Rock-A-Doodle.
The story follows young Edmond, a live action boy turned into an animated cat by The Duke of Owls as he helps a group of animated farm animals find their lost friend, the rooster Chanticleer, so he can raise the sun and ward off the evil owls and stop the endless rain and darkness. Chanticleer however, found a new life as an R&B singer in the city, and the owls try to stop the farm animals, and keep Chanticleer in the city. The plot does not really have any major fumblings about it, it does seem like some elements are just not explained very well, like how Chanticleer's agent and the Duke of Owls know each other, and a major plot point is that, as a ploy to keep Chanticleer in the city, the agent has another act, a character named Goldie, to make him fall in love with her, ending with her actually falling in love with him, and all we get of this development is some narration, and it really does make that entire plot point come out of nowhere. Speaking of the narration, it is not terrible but it isn't great. It's no Spirit, but it certainly isn't The Thief and the Cobbler.
Plot is not where the movie falls apart, where it falls apart is the voice acting. No offense to Toby Scott-Granger, who was a little kid when they were making this movie, but his acting was terrible in this movie, half the time I couldn't understand what he was saying. He hasn't done any major roles since the 90s, and apparently he is now a rapper, so... that's cool I guess. To be fair, it isn't that Toby is the only actor that does a bad job in this movie, Christopher Plummer's Grand Duke sounds a lot like he's channeling Christopher Lloyd, Charles Nelson Reilly, I would say is another attempt to ape Robin Williams in Aladdin, but either I'm wrong, or Don Bluth has future vision because Aladdin wasn't out yet, and wouldn't be released until the following year. This was also the final film role for Phil Harris, and he does an okay performance, it just makes me wish I was watching Robin Hood instead.
Speaking of vocal talent, the movie stars the late country singer Glen Campbell, and he does alright, I guess. I'm not really a big country fan, so I can't really say much about the songs in the movie. However, I can say that the movie does one of the biggest sins a musical can commit and has the songs get interrupted constantly. Opening song? Interrupted by narration. Goldie and Chanticleer duet? Interrupted not half a minute into the song. Some of the other songs are sung by the Owls and they're bad. There's a joke about one of the songs opening with the line "Tweedle-dee-dee", but what nobody ever mentions is that the song itself is less than a minute long, maybe even less than thirty seconds. For a musical with heavy allusions to Elvis Presley, you know "allusions" may be the wrong word but I can't think of another word that qualifies and also means "Blatant", "Obvious", and "Only Meaning of One Thing", but for a musical with references to Elvis, Chanticleer even goes by "The King", having the music be this bad seems like an insult to Elvis.
That brings us to the animation, and it's okay. It is still Don Bluth animation, but it's nowhere near as good as The Secret of NIMH or The Land Before Time. It still has some nice design work, moves nicely, this is not the worst looking Don Bluth production. That being said, they have a fair amount of live-action mixing in this movie, and it just doesn't work. It worked in Roger Rabbit because everybody on that movie worked hard to make the illusion work, but here, they just have Toby wander around a blue screen at the end, and it's painfully obvious. I think if they nixed the live-action stuff, made it a jukebox musical with songs by Elvis Presley, did a rewrite or two and got a different cast, this movie could have worked, but that is a lot of work to put into a movie.
So, what happened here? How did one of the best animation directors go from a string of highly regarded works, to this? Well, I don't really know if any of you know this, but in the late 1980s, there was a little bit of a shift in animation. In 1987, DuckTales became one of the first syndicated televised cartoons that did not require a toy line to make profit, and though it was based on an existing franchise, the comics did not exist because of the cartoon, the cartoon existed because of the comics. In 1988, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was released, helping Disney get back on its feet, and they followed that with The Little Mermaid in 1989, which a lot of people will argue was the movie that kickstarted the Disney Renaissance. On top of that, the decade ended with one of the most influential cartoons ever making its way to air, a little show called The Simpsons. The late 80s and early 90s were a changing time in animation, and Don Bluth's bread and butter, kids films with darker and more serious themes but still pulled through with a happy ending, those films didn't seem like they'd stick around much longer. That was mostly an early 80s thing, and it wasn't just Bluth doing it, Disney did it with The Fox and the Hound, Rankin & Bass did it with The Last Unicorn, I think the last Non-Don Bluth film to really fall into this category was 1987's The Brave Little Toaster.
I think the kind of movies Don Bluth wanted to make, were not the kind of movies people wanted to see by the 90s, so someone tried to make him adapt, whether it was a studio thing, a market thing or a personal thing I won't begin to guess. What I can say is that, this movie is bad, but ultimately harmless, I can see children watching this movie and enjoying it, but this is something they will grow out of. Is it worth showing your kids? I wouldn't say yes, I'd show them The Secret of NIMH or The Land Before Time instead, but if you are watching over really little kids and don't want to worry about giving them something really dark to watch, I can't see this as being any harm. It was mostly just dull and boring for me, not really something to get mad about. I don't recommend it, but it's harmless.
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