Rock Dog is a direct-to-streaming cheapie at a movie-ticket price
Did anyone working on the cheap-looking animated film Rock Dog ever stop to consider the fact that the dog of the title never rocks? He fights a grizzly bear in a cage match. He harnesses ancestral magic powers. He leaves behind his Himalayan-looking mountain village for the big city after a radio falls out of the clouds. He learns a lesson about… something. (This last point is fuzzy.) Those might qualify as “rock ’n’ roll” in a different context—well, perhaps not the part about learning a lesson. But rocking out in any widely accepted sense of the term? The dog doesn’t as much as plug in an electric guitar. There is a scene where he trudges around in the rain to Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” which is commonly considered a rock song, and while it’s a very strange moment for an otherwise unremarkable kids’ movie, it isn’t very rock ’n’ roll, is it? And as far as rock-star behavior is concerned, forget about it. This acoustic-guitar-strumming, sherpa-wearing canine is strictly a nice guy, with zero ego. He does go looking for a rock star, a small white cat with a pair of sunglasses permanently fixed to his face. But the title of the movie is Rock Dog. With a product this generic, one at least expects it to do what it says on the tin.
