ROCK DOG – Review

ROCK DOG is not one of those crossover hits that parents can enjoy just as much as their kids. Far from it. Uninvolving, unfunny and visually inferior to its peers, ROCK DOG is a straight-to-DVD production at best. How it managed to sneak its way onto the big-screen, we may never know. Luke Wilson provides the voice of Bodi, a Mastiff introduced on Snow Mountain in Tibet.  His job is guarding the wool-spinning sheep there from a nasty pack of wolves led by Linnux (Lewis Black). To avoid distractions, Mastiff leader (and Bodi’s dad) Khampa (J.K. Simmons) forbids all music from the mountain. But when a radio is dropped by a passing airplane, Bodi decides he wants to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. Defying his father’s wishes, he heads to the Zootopia-like big city, and finds the reclusive cat rock legend Angus Scattergood (Eddie Izzard), who needs a new song fast. If Bodi can put a band together, help Angus with his song, and defeat the wolves’ plot to take Snow Mountain, he will become what he’s always dreamed of being… a Rock Dog!!

Though I should not have expected much from a cheap animated film that gets dumped into the unholy wasteland of February, I still didn’t have my expectations sufficiently lowered for ROCK DOG. It’s a uniquely charmless motion picture, owing in no small part to the cut-rate quality of animated characters uniformly built out of the simplest possible shapes, and devoid of even the smallest hint of personality. Bears, cats, sheep, foxes, and dogs in ROCK DOG may have different shaped heads, but their noses and mouths are identical, their eyes have no life. It’s as if the artists simply threw a layer of textures on first-draft geometrical models – the physicality of these characters seems unfinished. We know Bodi is a Mastiff only because we’re told so, but he looks just as much like a beagle or a Yorkshire Terrier to me. But even if ROCK DOG weren’t as ugly as a mud fence, the film would still likely sink under the weight of its world-class awful screenplay, which turns something as straightforward as “I wanna be a rock star” into a boring mess.

There are many references to classic rock and vintage guitars and famous guitarists as if they hired a rock guitar scholar as script consultant, but kids won’t care about that and it’s not going to make things any more bearable for adults. One thing that ROCK DOG is really proud to showcase is some beastly footage of Bodi dancing to insufferable generic rock songs (direct the hate mail to songwriter Rolfe Kent). I’ve seen Christmas lights displays that are more high-tech than the first number where fireworks and stars shimmy about in the night sky in tempo for the entirety of a horrible song (which I think is actually called ‘Rock and Roll’). Yes, this is a movie for kids, but using that as justification for lazy work, as if children are inherently too dumb to know the difference, is just condescending. The bar has been raised so high in terms of quality of animation and character modeling that you simply can’t get away with a crappy sub-par cartoon anymore. Director Ash Brannon, who helmed the excellent SURFS UP and co-directed TOY STORY 3, should know better. In a post-Pixar world, where audiences have become accustomed to quality animated family films, ROCK DOG is a waste of time.

1/2 of 5 Stars