Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Special is an hour-long animated special on HBO Max created by Mo Willems, adapted from his children's book Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed.
Naked mole rats ordinarily don't wear clothes, but this changes when one mole rat named Wilbur J. Molerat discovers clothing and decides to get dressed. The rest of the naked mole rats aren't happy about this and make efforts to convince Wilbur to cease entertaining the notions of wearing clothes.
Recently, the full special has been released
on Willems' YouTube page.
Contains examples of:
- Adaptational Diversity: The naked mole rats in the book were all colored pink, but in this animated special are given different skin colors to simulate different ethnicities.
- Animals Lack Attributes: The mole rats are naked, but given that this is a family special, they do not have visible genitalia.
- Animated Adaptation: An animated special based on Mo Willems' book Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed.
- Animated Musical: The special has several significant scenes accompanied by musical numbers. It is mostly a kid-friendly rock musical, though there are a few songs in other styles.
- Be Yourself: The special's moral in the end is that you should be comfortable with who you are, whether that means wearing clothes or not.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The final song has Wilbur asking the audience to dance.
- The Burlesque of Venus: During the song "Scandal", a painting resembling a naked mole rat version of Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus is shown.
- Canon Foreigner: Wilbur's friends Grande, Tall and Venti were created for the special, as Wilbur and Grand-mah (albeit Grand-pah in the source material) were the only named characters in the original book.
- Crossover Punchline: The ending reveals that the clothes came from a truck of doll clothes driven by the pigeon from Mo Willems' other book Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
- Fun with Homophones: Grand-mah at one point responds to being addressed as "great Grand-mah" by asking if her mother's around.
- Gender Flip: The naked mole rats' elderly patriarch Grand-pah is reinterpreted by the special as a matriarch named Grand-mah. This may possibly allude to the fact that actual mole rats have queens like bees.
- Named by the Adaptation: The main character was only called Wilbur in the original book, but in this special is given the full name of Wilbur J. Molerat, Jr.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: Several parts have the CGI mole rats interacting with live-action humans.
