Rock Dog - Review (Spoiler Free!) 

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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)

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.

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

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?

+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.

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

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.

Wait, Chad. You play guitar?

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.

I really like the animation, looks really smooth to me

Always happy to be one of your earliest viewers. Your content rocks.

Gently shoves this into my pile of movies "I Actually Like But Everyone Seems to Hate"

This sounds like The Book of Life but unoriginal

My thoughts, I haven't seen it though I have this feeling that it could be a ok movie. I don't know why, but for some reason this movie kinda has something that may look neat from a prospective POV of a fan of anthromantic humans.

So it's like that Easter Bunny movie, but the CG is actually good

I haaaaaaaaaated this movie. It was so confusing and uncomfortable to watch. I left the theatre feeling like I lost a bit of my soul.

I did not have high hopes for this movie, but I went to see it anyways to keep up with this show, and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't absolute crap.

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

I haven't had an opportunity to see it yet, but going by the trailer and the Wikipedia article at least it is trying for a variation of the old plot "Young character has an aspiration that his parents don't understand or support" with the father in this story eventually listening to reason enough to let his son take a shot at it with the son agreeing to come back if it doesn't work out.

Personally, I find this to look better than Norm of North, the Characters (If You can Them that) in Norm of The North look bizarre and angular. This Movie looks more Stylized then blocky.

Comparing this to Norm of the North? Come on man it cannot be that bad. When i saw norm of the north trailers and clips I embraced for a bad movie but still watched it the movie felt really uninspired and uncharming. Rock Dog has uninspiration i admit from what i see so far and the story looks a lil cliche'd from what i've seen so far but the animation, style, colours are pretty charming and if you said the run time is short then it seems like Rock Dog can be a good movie that I can enjoy.

The funny thing is that, differing from most of the commentators here, I actually really liked the movie! This is most likely because I'm still quite young and I have no criticizing expertise at all, but I felt this movie was pretty nice for a younger audience! While I do agree that this movie is probably not for the more older audience, it was nice to see a movie that didn't really revolve any real-life issues and just let it pretty much do its own thing! As well as this, I actually liked the music-themed basis it had, like the main song, "Glorious" (which I found catchy, but some are alright to think otherwise!) Now, I'm going to put a bit spoilery content below, so just a fair warning for anyone reading this! Honestly, my real main complaint is that I wished this movie was longer! Yes, some are perfectly fine to think this is not the case and that the run-time it did have was good for it, especially for what Chad describes as a Redbox movie (sorry, I actually never had any real experience with a Redbox machine), but I really wished that it had more time to develop the characters and the environment around itself! It felt strange that it really just ended right there, but oh well! Also, I kind of wish that main villains had more screen-time as well? Linnux, Riff, Skozz, and basically the wolves seemed like pretty fun characters to play with and such, but I felt like their role in the movie was pretty diminished. I mean, they're literally gangster wolves. You could have so much fun playing around with both their animalistic behavior and how they would fit into this kind of society! But otherwise, I actually liked everything else! Despite the others, I really loved the animation and the style they implemented in here, but I do understand how some may get uncomfortable with this! That's really all I have to say! Sorry for making such a big comment! I just really wanted to put my thoughts down on the table as well! As I said before, I really have no experience with criticizing movies, cartoons, and the like, but I do wish I made my opinions as clear as the windows Angus and Bodi broke in the movie! Really, I believe this movie can only be best described if someone sees it for themselves! Though, I feel like this movie will probably be put onto Netflix, so watch out for that possibility! That's enough of me now! Thanks for reading this, and have a great day!

So glad you brought this series back for another year! Looking forward to seeing more!!

I think you should do spoilers , but have them in the second half of the video.

aha I'm glad you're continuing this series. can't wait to see how this turns out, from what I've seen we don't have a lot of promising animated movies this year but we'll make the best of it!!

Honestly, I really liked Rock Dog. May just be because I'm a sucker for anthropomorphic animated animals, but whatever.

Honestly I really like the style and animation! It is simple but very pleasant and easy on the eyes! It's also nice to hear it isn't _complete_ garbage.

I appreciate how you always give even sub-par movies a fair chance. It's a nice break from people who just cuss and yell about how crappy a movie is.

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

Let's give AniMat, Jambareeqi and Nostalgia Critic-style reviewers (re: Bobsheaux, Media Hunter Reviews, Shade Nocturne, RaisorBlade) requests that are to review the Rock Dog trilogy. Rock Dog - AniMat's Classic Reviews result predictions Story: 4/10 Animation: 6/10 Characters: 4/10 Overall: 5/10 (12/28 points) Cartoon Palooza might give Rock Dog an "Eh?" rating at best. Jambareeqi might give Rock Dog 2/5 strawberries (1 point to the content, 2 points to the characters, 3 points to the animation, 2 points to the acting, 2 points to the music and 10/25 points overall). CodedLockFilms might give Rock Dog a Worth Sitting Through rating.

Good thing this is spoiler free, I DEFINITELY don't wanna be spoiled

I have to admit, I actually really like the main characters design.

The animation is average, the best being the 2d portion at the beginning, but this is nowhere close to as bad as Norm of the North. The closest movie i can compare it to is Barnyard which sort of has a similar premise with Otis the Cow following his fathers footsteps despite wanting to have fun. Barnyard does it better by having better writing, funnier scenes, actually has emotional moments, and having a more memorable artstyle/animation.

*so i went to the movies to see Rock Dog* *the only people there was me and my family* *it turned off a fourth through* *if you're the only person at a movie, then you know the movie's bad*

I think this is kind of like The Secret Life of Pets and Sing: it's ok, but it's not something that will blow you away. It's ok. Worth a watch, maybe rent it and if you want you can show it to the kids. It's enjoyable, safe and pretty generic, but still cute and decent, imo.

i wonder how long batman will hold its spot

I want this movie to release in my country Ireland!

I really loved this movie, and yes, it wasn't very good, but it's decent. Watched it 2 years ago with my first cousin once-removed* and thought it was interesting. Plus when we graduated, I suggested my friend Faith to make a video with pictures with our classmates and teachers in it and also suggested that the background music was "Glorious", the song in this movie.

Rock dog was legitimately a good movie, it's got a good plot and good voice acting and cool character designs.

the film's animation was done by reel fx studios, the same campany that made the book of life back in 2014.

I actually really enjoyed this movie. I relate to it because I'm trying to climb my way to my own unique goals, rather than trying to fit into this mold society has made for us. I loved the ending with the concert- and Angus was probably one of my favorite characters, next to the fox (whose name I forget). I will admit this movie is a bit shortcoming when it comes to the characters (Body being an exception), because we hardly get to know anymore about them other than Body, his father and the sheep. Not sure if any of this had made any sense but... That's my opinion.

If there's anything I've learned about the film industry it's that J.K. Simmons is in like every movie ever

I found the movie fine overall, I can't argue with what was said. I don't know why everyone keeps comparing it to Norm though. That was far, far worse then this. I all so find it off from what I had seen when it comes to how few went to see this. At the theater I went to it had 2 sold out shows, something I don't see happen much there. For all I know there might had been some other reason for it but there was a good size group when I saw it too.

You know the funny thing is at my local Pawn Shop there was Rock Dog and two copies of Norm Of The North on Blu-ray i looked on IMDB user reviews I'll look to see if there is anything positive about the movie the whole majority said Rock Dog actually rocks also has a really nice story plus the music is pretty fun next time i go back i hope it's there i have to add it to my animation collection

I can't tell which animated films are unforgettable

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!

Did that Eddie izzard voices angus he’s also the voice Voldemort from the Lego Batman movie and miles axelrod from cars 2

The minute I saw the trailers I knew this was gonna be bad. Glad to know I was right. You know, I'm kinda curious what EXACTLY went wrong....I think I want that hour long analysis ;3

Rock Dog started out as a Chinese comic book, it was the first Chinese animated film in a while. At least that's what I heard

Where is Yugioh Dark Side of Dimensions? The movie came out January of 2017. It should at least be considered for the list of movies.

I've seen this movie before. No, I didn't see Rock Dog, but I'm pretty sure I've seen this story a dozen times. One thing this movie has going for it, based on what I've seen, it's visually more appealing than Norm of the North.

Yes I saw Rock Dog. My local discount theater managed to show it OPENING WEEKEND which was baffling to me. Also the day me and my buddies saw it (opening day) we were the only ones in the theater, primetime on a Friday evening, and we were told that we were the first to buy tickets to this movie at this theater. Definitely not a good, though not an unexpected, fate for this movie. I definitely enjoyed getting to riff on it with my friends in the theater while else thoroughly enjoying the movie despite its numerous flaws (such as plotpoints that get shown early only to be abandoned and then brought up OUT OF THE BLUE later on). I think one of the major issues is that this movie may have had multiple different studios or different brains working with the same idea. I have not read the original manga (yes, this movie is based on a manga, "Tibetan Rock Dog") but I have heard that it isn't very faithful to it. It appeared this movie has two conflicting style choices and didn't know how to balance them. The characters and central conflict feel very real, very "human", in the way they act, move, speak, their goals, their personality, etc which explains why you felt the feels when Bodi picked up the guitar (that's a very realistic emotion depicted) but the world they live in; the physics, the antics, the plot devices, the subplots, etc feel very toony and out of place in this very organic, realistic world. There is a scene where the fireworks are all going off in the village and we cut to Bodi dodging them in a very toony, Tom and Jerry-esque way. But in previous scenes we'd seen him interact with the world in the way a normal non-toon would. It's as if they crank up the toon to 10 in some scenes while in others they keep it at a 2 or 1. It never feels like a good 70:30 like it should. Personally enjoyed the movie. But it is not a good movie.

Rock Dog was a movie that felt it had potential, had it actually focused and brought up ideas with more energy and emotion. Here's the thing, it's not bad on the basis of it, sure the villains don't make sense and the setting is a hoshposh, but that's actually means a little and can be ignored. But the thing is, it did try to work on its character's charm, which they did have, but they never actually used that potential fully. That said, they never had the energy or created solidly emotional moments to make these characters memorable. The things they did were something you've seen before and predicted would happen, so aside from musical moments, it kinda wandered a bit instead of doing something interesting. It's fine movie to pass time, but nothing special.

Out of curiosity does anyone know why this animated film wasn't released in theaters in Canada?

I don't have the entire story or exact facts, but I heard this movie got a lot of backlash back in China and was released in only a few theaters, something about a hatred between the people who released it and the producers??? :(

I didn't even know this was a movie or that it was even in theaters till I went to go see Logan and saw the promotional poster for it.

Reply if you know this film exists. there was this animated film that was supposed to release on April 21 of this year called "spark" and that's literally all I know I'm not kidding yet nobody else has mentioned it online however i was lucky to find a few ads on certain Google play/app store games like cut the rope. it could be fake for all we know. also I found a trailer and it looks like a pretty unoriginal film. but I think it could be found. yet I will try to find evidence.

In my opinion, Rock Dog is the most underrated animated movie of the 21st century.

Yeah it's a fair review. I thought the parts with him dreaming about music and exploring music were decent. The stuff with the wolves is not. Everything you said is basically true but I didn't mind watching it. It was ok

its odd, i never saw any ads for this movie nor it in any theaters

I really thought the movie looked pretty good from what I saw of the trailer. Nothing amazing, but... I dunno, despite it's cliche plot, it just looked like a fun light hearted movie from a stupid I haven't really heard of. I'm still probably going to give this a rent when I get the chance.

The fact that big fish & begonia outperformed this movie makes me so happy

Well, actually the village being by a huge city sort of makes sense... I agree it shouldn't be that close to a city, but in places like China, there still are people living in ancient style villages in the mountains or (or wherever) while there is city isn't too far away.

Bruh what are you talking about Rock Dog is a cinematic masterpiece

My brother and I (big lost fans) flipped out when we found out that the name darma was used in this

kinda knew it wouldnt be that great but i still wanna see rock dog =3

i loved this movie ❤

The animated intro to this movie is amazing!

it looks like Sing

Seeing all the comments is getting me really sick of people comparing any movie that comes out with an all-animal cast to Zootopia. Zootopia didn't invent this trope, and it sure as hell also didn't invent the "leaves everything behind to pursue a dream (usually in a modern city) their old home (usually the country) couldn't offer" trope either. Cats Don't Dance did it years before, and even Robots could be put into the category if it was animals instead of robots. Ratatouille also had a similar plot, albeit forced rather than having the character willingly travel to the place. It's an old, yet constantly used trope that shouldn't be a point of comparison unless the other details are close, and I'm pretty sure Judy didn't move to the big city to be a musician.

hey it simon here i went and watched it and its not a bad movie some of the songs are good foot tapers so thats one good thing to say about the movie and i thing it wont win contests in vs disney movies any time soon but it one of those feel good movies and as you said just when we started to learn more about the characters the movie ended so yeah but in my book i loved it

hey guys. zootopia did extremely well. dont you think all the other studios would cash in on the anthropomorphic animal selling point?

This reminds me of the Easter movie Hop

I read some articles and it was said that Rock Dog was sabotaged in the Chinese theaters because it has something to do with an "Anti-Tibetan" Sentiment in China and a conflict between the Huayi Bros and Wanda Cinema Line. Sometimes, "Cliché" is good or okay, same with this movie. Yeah, it had abysmal critic ratings, critics are always finding perfection, but a poll that was conducted for the cinema-goers' and they averaged an B+ for the movie.

I saw this movie in theaters and I liked this film, it had decent animation, it did have funny moments and the songs were good. It's no award winner sure, but it's a passable movie.

Quite frankly I don't think it's a horrible movie. The animation is pretty smooth considering they probably had a tight budget, and the voice acting was pretty decent. The story is kind of confused but its pretty simple so its not all that hard to follow. I think its just the setting and the cliche plot (the whole "i dont want to grow up to be what my parent wants me to be" thing) that really screwed it over.

Ok but can we just acknowledge the whole ''Fleetwood Yak'' thing? I mean, that's fucking awesome! And The ''Scattercaster''?

For some reason, the ending song I actually liked....I always knew this movie wouldn't make it. You can always tell with these kind of movies..

Honestly it doesn't surprise me on the short run. I was actually kinda worried Chad wouldn't be able to see and review it.

Also, I don't know if someone pointed out by now, but the movie apparently got screwed over in China's biggest chain. Not because it sucked because the book it's based off from has the word Tibetan and being produced by a rival company. Don't believe me, look up on wikipedia or search Rock Dog that excludes box office and reviews.

This looks like it was directed by Wheat Bread.

Hey Chad! Great review as always i have an idea- could you make a list of the best from animation to live action movies?

Trust me after seeing the movie list for this year i think those two movies are still going to be pretty close to each other

As a theater employee, I was able to see this movie for free and still only sat through 30 minutes of it. Rock Dog's theaters sat empty more than they did with even one customer. Still was better than sing from what I saw.

And After 4 years they've released a part 2

It's kinda sad. I read so many articles on Cartoon Brew and Rotoscopers with the people behind the film talking about how this was a dream project they wanted to make for a long time.

I watched the film myself and feel like you may of been a bit too rough towards the film (This is my point of view) because i loved the idea even though it is similar to others but i enjoyed its nice twists in the story and the ending especially (I wont spoil anything)

I really didn't care for this movie. When I got the trailers (non stop, mind you) I looked at it as a "dreamer has a dream he's good at, dreamer's father disapproves, dreamer's suddenly bad and gets help from a pro, pro has some sort of secret, dreamer learns again, dreamer's father suddenly approves" plot. I may be wrong about a few of these things, but that's what I pulled from the trailers and this review, and that makes the story seem like plain bread.

It was pretty good. Not too complicated, yet still enjoyable and somewhat relatable

I think the winner of this year will be a live action movie

Yay new video

It looks like a low budget mix of sing and Norm of The North, trying to be Book of life and Kubo and the Two Strings