Short Rocker: New, Brief 'Rock Dog' Trailer Surfaces

With a little more than two months to go, Lionsgate has released a new trailer for Rock Dog...

A refresher: Rock Dog is an American-Chinese co-production that hit theaters in the Middle Kingdom this past summer. Reel FX, the good folks who gave us The Book of Life, was contracted to do the animation for the film. Lionsgate will be releasing it here in February.


Like I've been saying, I'm digging this. The short trailer is pretty decent, ping-pongs a bit here and there, but the movie I think looks and sounds promising.

It looks like a fun The Gods Must Be Crazy-type adventure story set in an all-animals world (that setting really did dominate 2016's animated feature field, didn't it?), and both trailers haven't left me disappointed. I've heard some word on the street, saying that it indeed is something to look out for. Makes me wish Lionsgate didn't get it, because they normally don't put much effort into marketing their animated releases - good or bad.

Anyways, yes, I'm still on board. What say you?

Swear Dog: 'Rock Dog' Gets a PG for "Language"

Well, damn...

The PG rating, as I've said before, is pretty much slapped onto every current animated movie. Even the kiddiest piece of shovelware gets the rating, for something vague like "rude humor" or "crude humor". "Thematic elements" is the other magnet, it seems. I'd argue 90% of them don't deserve that rating, maybe because I come from a time when most PG movies actually EARNED their rating.

This year, interestingly enough, doesn't have a single G-rated animated film. Or a G-rated wide release, outside of a couple little documentaries. Others are picking up on this, too. Doug Walker, through his Nostalgia Critic character, talked about this in a recent editorial. Some articles pop up here and there...

Now, one new rating caught my eye yesterday. It was the rating for Rock Dog, the Chinese-American animated film that came out in China a few months back. Lionsgate is releasing it here in February, and the rating reason was quite... Rare for a modern PG-rated animated movie: Action and language.

Language.

When's the last a big-time animated movie got a PG for language? Rango? The Lorax? Rango had a few "damns" and non-religious "hells". I don't remember the villain saying "damn" in The Lorax, like at all. Other animated family movies, even the more sophisticated ones, decide to be a little more... Erm. Responsible? So that means you're left with subtle jokes that would be unsuitable for young'uns if spelled out, and little innuendos like that. So Rock Dog has language. Like actual, full-on swearing.

But it's PG-level swearing, so we probably won't get anything worse than "damn", "ass", or "hell". Still, it's rather interesting to see an animated family film sport some swearing. It's been a no-no in the post-Code days for the most part, particularly for Disney Animation and Pixar. Some films like Titan A.E. snuck some in, in the 1980s you had some things like The Secret of NIMH and The Transformers: The Movie (which got away with a "shit" in a post-PG-13 PG). DreamWorks got a few in with things like Shrek, but later just opted for the usual "goes over the kids' heads" jokes. Being a story about a dog making it big in the rock star world, the language probably won't feel out of place.

Of course, a few little "bad" words here and there don't automatically make an animated movie mature or "adult". The Lorax may have a "damn" in it, but it's hardly a "mature" movie when everything else in it plays to level of a 6-year-old. Rango on the other hand is mature because of the storytelling, the themes, and the execution of it all, so the few little words fit into the script quite nicely. I still find it interesting that this little picture is the one to actually include this kind of thing in a day and age where language is still mostly untouched by these films.

The big question, though... Will it feel tacked on? Or will it work?

Rockin' Around the Corner: US Trailer for 'Rock Dog' Debuts

Ever since it was announced that Lionsgate picked up Reel FX's Chinese co-production Rock Dog for distribution in the US, some wondered when a trailer would drop...

Now one is here, and the film is still on track to open in late February of next year... Judging by this scattershot trailer, this looks like another one that Lionsgate is going to toss off.


It's weird because the first half, while a bit noisy, does a decent job at giving you the gist of the story. I was always interested in this picture because it looks to be a sort of The Gods Must Be Crazy-like story set in an all-animals version of our world, taking place in a Chinese village that's akin to an Amish community, and how one of its own ventures off into the modern world. Reel FX did the animation work, while this is mostly a Mandoo Pictures/Huayi Brothers film.

Lionsgate, however, has a history of dumping animated movies in theaters. They manage to get them wide, 2,000+ theater releases... But their marketing does little to sell them. It isn't just because of quality, they did this to Aardman's Shaun the Sheep Movie last year, and that had one of the highest scores of any movie released last year. Completely. Dumped. It. They've always been unsuccessful with feature animation, whether it's picking up less-than-desirable flicks or doing nothing with decent ones.

Anyways, at least we're getting this feature on the big screen. It looks stronger than Lionsgate's other non-Shaun movies, and I like the premise, so hopefully it's pretty decent. Sadly, due to theater politics, it bombed in its home country. I don't see it doing any better here.

What say you?