Dan Kuenster

As a kid, Dan Kuenster wanted to be both an actor and an artist. That's the best explanation, he figures, for how he ended up in the fanciful world of animation--first for Walt Disney Co. and later under the tutelage of Don Bluth, at whose independent animation studio he drew landmark animated films such as "The Secret of NIMH" and Steven Spielberg's "An American Tail." With credentials like those, Kuenster could have been content staying at the highest level of cinema animation artists.

As a kid, Dan Kuenster wanted to be both an actor and an artist. That's the best explanation, he figures, for how he ended up in the fanciful world of animation--first for Walt Disney Co. and later under the tutelage of Don Bluth, at whose independent animation studio he drew landmark animated films such as "The Secret of NIMH" and Steven Spielberg's "An American Tail." With credentials like those, Kuenster could have been content staying at the highest level of cinema animation artists.

"Rock-A-Doodle," a new animated feature from the Sullivan Bluth Studios, mixes elements of "Chanticleer," "The Wizard of Oz," backstage musicals and old Elvis movies into a muddled, brightly colored children's entertainment that is considerably less than the sum of its parts. It's not infuriatingly bad, the way the product-driven cartoons of the early '80s were, but the dutiful adult who decides to watch "Rock-A-Doodle" (citywide) with his kids is signing up for a long, effortful afternoon.