| CHICKEN LITTLE |
 2005 - USADirector: Mark Dindal
- Reviewed by Vickie
Set in the town of Oakey Oaks, the story centers on local pariah Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff), a bespectacled kid (eeeerily reminiscent of Looney Tunes’ Egghead) who’s become the defacto village idiot and laughingstock after sounding the alarm that the sky is falling…only to have nothing fall from anywhere. Time passes and Little makes repeated attempts to redeem himself in the eyes of his neighbors and perpetually boorish classmates. His only friends are Abby “Ugly” Duckling (voiced by Joan Cusack), panicked porcine Runt of the Litter (voiced by Steve Zahn) and Fish Out of Water (who has no voice because his head is encased in a water-filled diver’s helmet, but his gurglings are handled by someone named Dan Molina). Together, the misfit quartet endures taunts and teasing, but just as Little is about erase all memory of his ill-fated doomsday declaration, another piece of the sky falls. This time, though, there’s an army of aliens responsible, and the threat of complete annihilation on the horizon. What’s a little chicken to do? Within the nursery-rhyme tale are a number of recognizable, non-nursery themes, like father-son angst (Little’s sports-hero father doesn’t understand his son), the omnipresent schoolyard cliques (the popular kids vs. the nerds!), Hollywood’s bastardization of real-life events on film, and even the notion that politicians are nothing more than talking heads with crafty PR people. But all of those things seem a bit extraneous and the resulting film feels unexpectedly over-stuffed with storylines. Everyone in this movie has issues, it seems, and all of them are addressed. Part of the problem is that more than half the film consists of build-up, with scene after scene of Chicken Little at school or out in the world, repeatedly ridiculed. It takes a long while (in a film that’s only 78 minutes long) for the action to get started. Once it does, though, the film picks up steam. The arrival of the aliens marks a turning point, both in terms of story progression and tone. The latter portion of Chicken Little is much livelier and spirited, and the characters come to life in much more entertaining ways. Despite Chicken Little being the star, my favorite character was that adorably spunky Fish Out of Water, who deservedly gets some of the film’s biggest laughs. Kirby, the three-eyed, orange alien baby, comes in a close second. There isn’t a whole lot about Chicken Little that demands it be seen on the big screen, so if you and your family can wait for video, you might want to. It does go out with a bang, but you’ll have to endure a comparatively tedious start—wherein younger audience members might get restless—before momentum kicks in. |
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Alas, Chicken Little kind of drops the computer-animated ball
that has been carried for so long by Disney’s long-standing (and now
defunct) relationship with Pixar. As much as I wanted to love this
movie, and even though it does have some cute bits, it just doesn’t
hold a candle to previous Disney gems like Toy Story or
Finding Nemo. It feels more like an amalgam of leftover Pixar
bits and clunky, unfunny junk thrown in by the folks who brought us
Shark Tale.
