Chanticleer

Chanticleer is a remake of the 1991 animated film Rock-a-Doodle. It is based on the play of the same name.

## Plot

The film begins with a prologue in which the narrator asks the audience to imagine themselves in a barnyard, and calls down a giant magnifying-glass to better see the animals up close.
Chanticleer is a gallic rooster who secretly believes that his crowing causes the sun to rise. The movie opens as several other animals are discussing the singing skills of Snipes the Blackbird. The hens and Snipes then praise Chanticleer's crowing skills until he enters and sings his "Tribute to The Sun". Although the hens try to persuade Chanticleer to confess the secret of his crowing, he refuses. He converses with Patou, the farmyard dog, about Snipes's cynicism and biting wit; while Chanticleer considers it of little importance, Patou warns that Snipes's flippant attitude is a dangerous moral influence because it weakens sincere belief in the potential of heroism. Suddenly, a female golden pheasant named Goldie arrives in the barnyard, fleeing from a hunter. Chanticleer helps hide her in Patou's doghouse.
At night, the nighttime birds of prey, along with the farm's cat, the fox, and Snipes, plot to kill Chanticleer because his crowing interrupts their nefarious plans. They devise a plot to lure Chanticleer to the weekly soirée held by the fashionable Guinea Hen, where they will also invite a famous game cock to assassinate Chanticleer. Goldie overhears, but Snipes persuades her not to tell Chanticleer of the plot. When Chanticleer appears to crow for the dawn, the pheasant persuades him to attend the soirée, and also to confess his secret belief that his crowing makes the sun rise. Snipes, hiding in a flower pot, eavesdrops through the hole in the pot's bottom, but because his position doesn't allow him to see the sunrise, he assumes Chanticleer's confession is only a ruse to seduce Goldie. After the pheasant leaves, Snipes tells Chanticleer that the game cock will attend Guinea Hen's soirée, and Chanticleer insists on attending and confronting him.
At the soirée, a series of increasingly fancy-bred roosters are introduced before Chanticleer arrives; disgusted by the artificiality of the other birds' plumage, he insists on being introduced simply as "the cock". When the fighting cock appears, he and Chanticleer fight, with all the birds except Goldie and Patou cheering for the fighting cock. Chanticleer is badly beaten and nearly killed, but at the last moment, a hawk flies overhead and he and the other birds cower in fear. Chanticleer bravely shields the others with his body, and scares the hawk away. When the hawk leaves, the game cock makes a last lunge at Chanticleer, but wounds himself instead and is carried away. Chanticleer bitterly denounces Snipes's soulless cynicism and the crowd's envious rooting for his enemy, and departs for the forest with Goldie.
In the woods, Goldie, jealous of Chanticleer's single-minded devotion to his ideal, entreats Chanticleer to give up his love for the sun and devote himself entirely to her. He cannot bring himself to do so, and secretly calls the barnyard for news updates on a telephone made from vines. When Goldie discovers the ruse, she demands that Chanticleer prove his love by not crowing, but when he refuses this, she decides to trick him into listening to the nightingale's song, knowing its beauty will distract him long enough for dawn to appear without him. A group of toads arrive, praising Chanticleer's song as far prettier than the nightingale's, which he has never heard. When the nightingale begins to sing, Chanticleer is awestruck by the beauty of his song, and realizes that the toads' derision paralleled the farm animals' jealous derision of his own crowing. Finding themselves kindred spirits, the nightingale and Chanticleer praise each other's songs. At that instant, a hunter (the same man who owns Chanticleer's farm) shoots and kills the nightingale. While Chanticleer is grieving, Goldie points out to him that dawn has come without him. Chanticleer is at first distraught, but then realizes that the farm still needs his crowing because without it, people and animals will sleep and not realize another day has begun. The spiritual dawn brought about by his singing repels the bleak spiritual night that provides cover for the birds of prey. He decides it is his duty to return to the farm, and when Goldie demands that he love her more than the dawn, he refuses, and leaves her. Although initially angered, when Goldie realizes that the hunter who shot the nightingale is now aiming at Chanticleer, she is overcome by her love and her admiration for Chanticleer's idealistic devotion. To save his life, she tries to distract the hunter by flying up herself, but is caught in a net he had set in order to capture her for his farmyard. The shot goes wide; Chanticleer returns safely to the farmyard, where he will soon be joined by the captured Goldie, who has resigned herself to taking second place to the rooster's devotion to his duty of crowing every morning.

## Differences from the original movie=

* Chanticleer is the protagonist, Goldie has a larger role, Edmond and the magical elements are completely absent (though the farm cat looks like him and shares his name), Patou and the Grand Duke of Owls have smaller roles, Snipes is the villain, and the rooster who Chanticleer fights at the beginning of the original has a larger role. Most significantly, Chanticleer's crowing does not make the sun rise, and he accepts that