Chicken Little
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Mark Dindal |
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| Distributor | Walt Disney Home Entertainment |
| Honors | |
| A classic fable gets fused with War of the Worlds in Disney’s Chicken Little. In the small town of Oakey Oaks, young Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff, Garden State) struggles to live down the embarrassment of having once thought the sky was falling. But when he gets struck again by a hexagonal, sky-camouflaged, hi-tech doohickey, he and his friends Ugly Duckling (Joan Cusack, School of Rock), Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn, Sahara), and Fish Out of Water discover that aliens are preparing to invade Earth—but since no one… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
A classic fable gets fused with War of the Worlds in Disney’s Chicken Little. In the small town of Oakey Oaks, young Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff, Garden State) struggles to live down the embarrassment of having once thought the sky was falling. But when he gets struck again by a hexagonal, sky-camouflaged, hi-tech doohickey, he and his friends Ugly Duckling (Joan Cusack, School of Rock), Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn, Sahara), and Fish Out of Water discover that aliens are preparing to invade Earth—but since no one believed Chicken Little the first time, why would they believe him now? Though kids will enjoy the bright whizz-bang action sequences of Chicken Little, discerning parents will find the movie tedious. Technically, it has the computer animation quality of Pixar—but with none of their intelligence, heart, or simple storytelling skill. The basic idea of connecting the fable to aliens is amusing, but the script routinely bogs down in clumsy father-son issues that seem like material edited out of Finding Nemo. The jokes rarely have anything to do with the characters, but are mostly pop-culture references that are sadly out of date. The action sequences were obviously created with the inevitable video game in mind, for which the movie is little more than an advertisement. Chicken Little falls flat. —Bret Fetzer
Barnes and Noble
Crazy, they call him: Ever since Chicken Little (endearingly voiced by Zach Braff of Scrubs) caused Katrina-like mayhem in Oakey Oaks by proclaiming that the sky was falling, he has been an outcast, a laughingstock to his classmates, and a disappointment to his father (Garry Marshall), a former baseball hero. But just as he is redeemed by some miraculous heroics of his own on the diamond, hysteria repeats itself when another piece of celestial debris crashes into his room. Chicken Little, Disney’s first computer-animated feature, does not exactly lay an egg. It was an Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Film, and technically and artistically, it dazzles as only a Disney product can. But the story is a scrambled mélange of character types, themes, and comic conceits lifted from other films. Jimmy Neutron fans may recognize Carl Wheezer in Runt of the Litter, the pathetic porcine character voiced by Steve Zahn. And the climactic Hollywoodization of Chicken Little’s adventure echoes the drive-in finale of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. With the baseball subplot, a seeking-closure-with dad subplot, and even a War of the Worlds alien invasion, Chicken Little is anything but. This disc hatches the usual Disney goodies, including three interesting discarded alternate openings. One is a remnant of the time when the title character was conceived as a girl. Another, narrated by the late Don Knotts (as Mayor Turkey Lurkey), is a charming, traditional 2-D animated recap of the classic Chicken Little fable. Donald Liebenson
