Movie Review: Rock and Rule

Overall Message

Rock has the power to change the world, and depending on the song, demons can be released or vanquished by it.

Story (Spoiler Alert)

Earth has been ravaged by a nuclear war that wiped out all humans and replaced them with mutated, anthropomorphic rodents.  The story centres around Mok, an aging rock star, who is trying to bring a demon to earth from another dimension and Angel, who is a keyboardist in a band who dreams of being a lead singer

Through scientific research Mok has found out he can transport the demon to earth and harness it's power by using a specific frequency that can only be created by a live singer.  Upon discovering this, he travels the world looking for a singer with the right vocal frequency.  

Cut to Angel trying to convince her boyfriend, Omar the band's lead singer, to let her sing.  Unfortunately Omar is too focused on hogging the stage to give her a shot.  During the performance Angel defies Omar and sings her own song.  Of course, Mok just happens to be in the bar for Angel's first performance and his ring (designed to detect the right frequency) lights up.  Mok then invites the band to his mansion.  He separates the band mates and tries to get Angel to agree to sign a record deal with him.  Angel says she'll do it, but only with her bandmates, at which point Mok kidnaps Angel, and tells the other band members that she is going to pursue a career with him.  Omar, her boyfriend, believes she has selfishly abandoned them, but the other two bandmates are suspicious of Mok and convince Omar to follow Mok and talk to Angel.

The boys attempts to meet with Angel are unsuccessful and they end up being captured and mind washed by Mok.  When Mok shows Angel the boys being tortured she agrees to sing for him if he lets them go.  During the concert when the demon is released Angel finds a way to send it back to hell along with Mok and save the what's left of Earth.  

Critique 

Overall this animation is to be admired for a variety of reasons.  The lead female character is a stand alone that never requires the assistance of her male companions, the supporting animation visuals are way ahead of their time, the character animation is high-end (they don't use cycles and each frame has been carefully drawn), and the animation for the demon alone is worth seeing the film for (loads of shading, flowing organic shapes, freaky visuals).  Don't believe me?  Watch the film :)

Ideas

There needed to be more edges in the characters.  Both in terms of traits and character designs.  The characters are childish in design while the sets take on the feel of a post-apocalyptic Blade Runner.  It feels like there were too many genres blended as a result of aesthetic changes during the production process and not enough of a budget to go back and update the previous work that was initially designed for a younger audience.

Angel was too much of a goody two shoes.  I wanted Angel to lose it on Mok, break his arm or smash his nose, anything to really show she was pissed off.  

I wanted to like Omar, but he was too self centred, the only non-self centred things he did came as a result of his band mates suggestions.  He needed to have some good deeds originate directly from himself.   

Mok was the best character.  For me, he was the only main character that jived well with the story and overall aesthetic.  

Conclusion

Overall, Rock and Rule as an animation is fantastic.  Unfortunately from a marketing point of view it had a foot in two age group categories and as a result neither one totally embraced it.  To broaden the appeal to the older age group, I believe that Nelvana would have needed to find a way to push the sex quotient just a little higher.  The easiest way to do that would have been to make the characters human.  Then the scene at Club 666 with all the bouncing breasts and pert nipples would have made every boy from the eighties run out to buy this movie.  I think that's the main difference between Heavy Metal and Rock and Rule.  Heavy Metal, even though the plot was shaky, had sex scenes with nudity -and as funny as that is- it played a large part in making made Heavy Metal a financial success.

This film represents a special time in history when animation was reinventing itself after the golden age of Disney and if you haven't seen Rock and Rule yet, I've listed some amazing deals from Amazon below.