Rock Dog - Review (Spoiler Free!)

Let's check out ROCK DOG!

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This Semi Cartoon Review Is brought to you by your fond childhood memories®
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[CamsEyeView]

I wouldn't really compare it to Norm of the North. Rock Dog seems like a film that had effort put into it. Like, not focused effort, but effort to be decent. Norm had no effort and no budget. This at the very least had a budget and style to it. I would consider it more of a The Wild Life or Ratchet & Clank situation where a film that had a small budget that shouldn't have been in theaters somehow got into theaters.

[andrewkful]

.... uh no. Norm of the North's animation is WAY worse than this!! Why does everyone keep saying this!?!

[Garyfan]

i will say that the animation in this movie is pretty good even though it's on a small budget it's smooth and clear and the characters move much better than in Norm of the North

[roenais]

looks like quite a nice looking movie, in terms of visuals. i guess im a fan of a simpler style in 3d animation

[lionblaze]

I haven't seen this yet but~ woa, I like the animation style of this.. I don't know why, its just nice. it looks small(er) budget sure but I like it

[TrackerRoo]

I actually enjoyed it. Sure the main villain came with a stupid plot line. Like really stupid, his minions had a health plan and essentially he wanted food when he could just go out and eat anything. It made no sense at all. But aside from that the dad was a typical dad who just wanted his son to be like him, level headed, down to earth, hard working, follow in the footsteps sort of thing. While his son finds wonder in the world and wants more out of life. The characters in town are just typical in town folks. You have a record boss with a hard deadline, an artist with writers block, dreamers and bus drivers.

Being hard on this film is mostly unjustified. The main villain was lame, but his minions weren't that bad. Better than the crap from the Minion movie for sure, dear God I cant understand how anyone could like that nonsense. I'd recommend this one, just like I would Sing and Zootopia.

[maryb]

About "ancient Tibet" and modern cities... that still exists today. There are villages in the Himalayas where people still live a traditional lifestyle herding animals, doing subsistance agriculture, traveling by foot, living in huts with just an open-fire stove using yak dong for fuel. Of course they can have radios and planes can fly above them. Some have electricity connected to the grid and supplement with solar panels. And yes, they can take a bus to go to the city. Walk to the road, get on the bus that passes once a day gathering people from all the mountain settlements for an 8 hour trip on crazy mountain roads. Not everywhere in the world is exactly like your US neighborhood. (I agree the musician's robot is too futuristic though :P)

[meevins]

Honestly, it is a shame the plot seems so bad. The animation style and character designs are really cool. I like the idea of this and if it was rewritten and structured a lot better I think it could actually work.

[blekksverd]

J. K. Simmons was in this? How do these low-budget movies manage to get these genuinely talented actors anyways?

[miyotazaki-san]

No idea why I like it. I hated it at first, but it got very good later on.
I thought it was a super easily predictable movie, but apparently it didn't come out that way.
Idea is quite unique too. I love Angus Scattergood's design.

[ayior]

the character designs look pretty fun tho, and the quality of the art and animation also looks... decent. not amazing but better than Norm or Wild Life :D

[RedRyuSmash]

You should have brought up the 2d animation that showed up in the beginning as a prologue, it was by far the best part of the movie and the whole movie should have been animated like that.

That said, I thought it was meh to ok for kids. 5/10-6/10 for me. If they are interested in it, why not it's harmless. Norm of the North is pandering to a far bigger degree that I think it is insulting to kids, this isn't anywhere as bad as Norm of the North is. Hell I'd probably say I liked this movie more than Sing because it stuck to one character where I got very slightly invested in unlike the other where I got none.

I think it's fine as a netflix or redbox watch, not for theaters though.

[Foustdoodles]

+Lewtoons I went and saw the movie, and I REALLY liked it!! I saw this and actually thought it could make me want to be a legit rock star!! But hey, the movies can't all be winners, and I did enjoy your video as always, and can't wait to see more. A video request: draw yourself and the people YOU know in the Zootopia art style, find what animal you and your friends personalities would match up to.

[StrawberryCelebi]

In this movie's defense, it did suffer from a lot of censorship, budget issues and translation errors, having been produced simultaneously for both Eastern and Western audiences. Hell, it was basically sabotaged by China's largest theater chain, which is probably the biggest reason its been such a box office failure.
This movie was also written by nine different people, which is why the plot is so disjointed at times. The "I wanna be a rock star" subplot, the wolf mafia subplot, and the "I suddenly have magic powers" subplot. The latter of which probably has four minutes of screen time total. The City Plot, which was the director's real passion, was honestly pretty good in my opinion. Even the visuals and animation seem quite noticeably better in this section of the film. I loved the whole scene when they were writing the song. If the movie had stayed in the City for the whole run, I feel that it would have been a much better, more cohesive film. We would have been able to spend more time with Angus and Bodie instead of having to run off every five minutes to deal with an actual cannibal mafia and Kung Fu Panda ripoffs.

The director, Ash Brannon, also directed Surf's Up, which is one of my favorite animated movies. Rock Dog has about the exact same plot. But to me the whole "protagonist sets off from their boring home to meet their hero in a new strange and wondrous world, hero is mean to them, then they befriend/are trained by their hero and beat the bad guy" is my romantic comedy. You've Got Mail, Pillow Talk, French Kiss... they're all the same movie. Ash Brannon movies are all the same too, but I'm still going to enjoy them like a suburban mom drinking wine and surfing Netflix. Even the characters of Surf's Up and Rock Dog are the same. Besides the greenhorn hero and the grumpy master (Cody and Big Z, Bodie and Angus), there's one unnecessarily mean character ( Tank in Surf's Up, Lion guy in Rock Dog), one stoner character (Chicken Joe in Surf's Up, goat drummer in Rock Dog), and one extremely passive female character who is only there to be female (Lani in Surf's Up, Darma in Rock Dog.). Even all the sheep were reminiscent of the copy and paste background penguins on Pen Gu Island.

So yeah, all in all, I feel like the middle part of this movie is a nice little gem, but its unfortunately wrapped up in a weird and confusing Dreamworks fever dream.

[jennifercarrine]

I think this is just a rip off of Hop, that lame movie about the Easter Bunny's son who wants to be a musician too

[Pizzacake]

I really like the animation, looks really smooth to me

[Andy-trth]

I’ve watched it- though a while ago so it’s kinda lost in my memory. I really liked it a lot though. I thought the cat was a pretty good semi-antagonist, and the comedy was pretty decent. The music though was incredibly underrated in my opinion. That’s how I remembered it anyway- I just randomly got the tune “Glorious” in my head a year or two after watching. 8/10

[AvaliaKasa]

As a musician I really actually kinda liked this movie, but mostly because of Angus Scattergood. also gotta love Eddie Izzard no matter what.

But yeah, the main plot was a little too complicated for a movie so short and a character so musically inclined. If it were about him moving from the country to the city (like I'd hoped), it might've been more coherent. I liked it either way tho!

[AgumonofAlchemy]

Am I the only one who thinks this movie was trying to rip off Kubo and the Two Strings and Zootopia/Sing at the same time?

[misskobeyoshi]

Zootopia meets Norm of the NorthI had a feeling this movie was gonna suck