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Rock & Rule Movie Review

Rock & Rule is a 1983 Canadian animated musical fantasy film directed by Clive A. Smith. It is a mess of a movie that has its strengths, but is overall too incomprehensible and bland.

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“Evil spelled backward is live,

and we all want to do that!“

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A malevolent rock star kidnaps a singer to force her to participate in the summoning of a demon, and her band must help her stop him. First off, the plot isn’t very good. When you take the kidnapping out of it, all you are left with is a bunch of filler. The movie needed stronger storytelling and more memorable characters to make it more appealing for people who aren’t into rock music.

Yes, the character development is also quite mediocre. None of the characters make any meaningful impact on the viewer, though the villain is definitely fun in his own right. Omar and Angel are utterly forgettable as the heroes. The voice acting is solid, but the personalities are almost non-existent.

There are two saving graces in Rock & Rule and those are the soundtrack and its animation. This is a musical, so the focus is primarily put on numerous rock numbers, and I have to say that they are pretty good, some of them even a lot of fun. Again, for those who aren’t huge rock genre fans, this won’t blow them away, but it’s perfectly solid regardless. It’s by far the best thing about the film.

The animation is also very good. The palette is colorful, the character designs are actually splendid and everybody looks excellent. The colors pop off the screen and the more fantastical sequences are beautifully rendered and gorgeous to look at. The movie has that strange 80s adult animation vibe that is very appealing, at least for a short while.

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But eventually, Rock & Rule becomes too one-note and chaotic to suffice. Not only is the pacing weak, but the whole storyline is too slight to support a feature film and the movie never decides on which character to focus more and whether or not to go fully into the fantastical realm. This all led to an indecisive and chaotic production.