Rock-A-Doodle - 1 star out of 10

Rock-A-Doodle - 1 star out of 10

It is tough to believe that this is Don Bluth’s retaliation to Beauty and the Beast.  "Rock-A-Doodle" is just... awful.  When your antagonist is an owl whose evil deed is making it rain... and his main motivation is liking the dark... and hating rock and roll... you know that you’re in trouble.  Then let's create a main character who is Elvis in rooster form and is basically written out of the script after the first scene.  Let's add in a scary-looking hound dog that can't tie his shoes as a sidekick and a live-action boy who is turned into a feminine-looking cartoon cat.  This film is a good reminder of why Disney rules the world of animation.  In "The Lion King," a lion fights to save the kingdom that his evil uncle has taken.  In "Rock-A-Doodle," a cat and a mouse fly a giant pink helicopter in an attempt to make the sun come up and drive the evil owls away.  The only thing worse than the story is the live actors.  I'm still trying to comprehend why they have a narrator (a la Beauty and the Beast) AND a live-action person reading a story to a little boy (a la The Princess Bride).  One or the other is a nice touch but you can't have a cohesive story with both.  How dare Phil Harris (the voice actor who portrayed Little John and Baloo in Disney’s Robin Hood and Jungle Book) sign on for this atrocity.  Even though they hired some entertaining character actors like Ellen Greene and Eddie Deezen, they were wasted wasted on horrible dialogue.  The characters are incredibly forgettable, particularly the "main character" who isn't even really in this movie.  He does little more than provide the soundtrack for the rest of the characters.  The "bouncers" are bunch of toads?  Were they trying to make us roll our eyes?  Not to mention the fact that the owl can unexplainably turn into a tornado.  But after suffering through this film, at least there is an exciting, show-stopping ending, right?  Just as the main character starts to sing and interact with the rest of the characters for the first time in the film [wait for it...] the ending credits begin to roll.  And then that song quickly fades away to make room for another song being sung by a different character about how learning to tie your shoes is just like life.  I'm sorry, Don Bluth, but your enjoyable animation couldn't save this garbage.