In the city, Bodi meets other wannabe musicians.
However, Khampa warns, “If you fail, you must never speak of music again.” To keep the peace, Khampa allows Bodi to take a bus to the city, so that he can follow his dream. When that doesn’t work, Khampa bans all music from Snow Mountain. He tries a “scared straight” technique to stop Bodi. Pappa Khampa is not happy that Bodi wants to play his guitar instead of guarding sheep. In no time, Bodi learns to play the guitar, and he dreams of being a rock ‘n’ roll star. He runs to the storage barn, and grabs an old guitar from his childhood. He turns the knobs and stumbles upon a radio station that plays rock music. Bodi has never seen a radio before, and he thinks it is a magic box. The debris includes some nuts and bolts, and an old radio. One day, an airplane flies over Snow Mountain, and some debris falls from the plane. Of course, Bodi wants to do his own thing, and he isn’t sure if that includes protecting sheep. Simmons), and he is grooming his son Bodi ( Luke Wilson) to become the next in command. Like “Zootopia,” this movie is an anthropomorphic tale about dogs, sheep and other animals that talk and act like humans.Įvidently, the dog’s job is to guard the village’s sheep from ravenous wolves. The story begins with two Tibetan Mastiff dogs who live on Snow Mountain and protect a herd of sheep. A Summit release.“Rock Dog” is a 3D animated comedy about a dog who wants to be a rock-n-roll musician, despite his father, who wants him to be a sheep herding dog. Simmons, Lewis Black, Mae Whitman, Jorge Garcia, Kenan Thompson, Sam Elliott, Matt DillonĬredits:Directed by Ash Brannon, script by Ash Brannon, based on the comic book. Only Lewis Black, doing a few of his trademark meltdowns, comes close to finding a laugh.Īnd he’ll be a lot funnier telling the story, in stand-up routines or on talk shows, of how he took Chinese cash and giggled all the way to the bank making this made-by-a-committee-of-market-analysts disaster.Ĭast: The voices of Luke Wilson, Eddie Izzard, J.K. Kenan Thompson and Jorge Garcia do two sidekick voices, in the interest of diversifying the cast. You can’t really tell it’s Owen Wilson doing Bodi’s voice. The music? Sort of a Chinese market research idea of “rock.” The animation is generic, but pretty enough.
Not a one-liner, not one single sight gag pays off. But along the way, he runs afoul of a competitor guitarist (Matt Dillon) who owns him in a shredding contest, a fighting bear and the wolf mob boss (Lewis Black) who longs to get his paws on every thing Bodi holds dear, especially that village of sheep where the young dog comes from.ĭirector Ash Brannon (“Surf’s Up”) and a slew of credited co-writers could not uncover a laugh in this material. He sets out to study under the master, Angus. “Find the passion, the fire inside,” Fleetwood Yak counsels. He wants to be just like his new hero, a cat named Angus Scattergood (Eddie Izzard). He wants to develop some chops, visit the city, go to Rock and Roll Park where the rock buskers play and form a band.
ROCK DOG FULL MOVIE 2016 PORTABLE
And the moment a portable radio drops into his life, he has his own dream. Simmons) has figured out the best way to keep the wolves at bay - train the village of sheep to wear armored dog suits.īut the moment Bodi picks up a stringed instrument, he has other interests. Sam Elliott takes on the same role he played in “The Big Lebowkski,” as the drawling sage narrator, here named Fleetwood Yak (Haw!), telling us the story of Bodi (Luke Wilson), whose dad (J.K. But those conditions, considered an anti-trust violation here in the States, and the fact that they threw a lot of money at a “Toy Story” director and International voice talent for the English language release, don’t save it.īecause there isn’t a laugh in it. It’s one of the most expensive movies ever made in China, wholly financed by one of the Chinese studios that also owns Chinese movie theaters.
How do we know it’s Chinese? Bodi, the strumming/singing Tibetan canine of the title, doesn’t quote the Dalai Lama or wear “Free Tibet” t-shirts. A sheep dog abandons the family business - protecting the flocks of his Tibetan village - to seek fame and power chords in the Big City in “Rock Dog,” a Chinese cartoon based on a Chinese comic book.