No, Chicken Little, the sky isn’t really falling. Too bad the same can’t be said for Disney’s station in the animation world. The former undisputed heavyweight champ of colorful kid flicks hasn’t been putting up much of a fight against hungry young contenders in recent years, and this latest effort from the Mouse is as weak and puny as its diminutive title character. Everything about “Chicken Little” appears to have been pilfered from earlier, more accomplished efforts — “Finding Nemo” “The Incredibles” and “Shrek” among them — and the resulting hodgepodge suffers greatly for its creators’ failure to establish an original identity. The writing is sloppy, the story littered with lame gags and overbearing pop culture references sure to fly right over the heads of the tykes the film is supposedly geared toward (I was in a theater FILLED with little ones, and the eerie silence throughout the film’s 83 minutes does not bode well for the Chick’s box office prospects beyond opening weekend).
Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff of “Scrubs” and “Garden State”) becomes the pariah of his pastoral hamlet and an embarrassment to his pop Buck Cluck (Garry Marshall, his Bronx patois conspicuously out-of-place) after coaxing everyone into a tizzy with his famous ill-advised distress signal. At the urging of gal-pal the Ugly Duckling (Joan Cusack), Little tries to get back into single dad’s good graces (dead mothers are a morbid staple in Disney flicks) by joining the school baseball team, which he improbably leads to the pennant. Midway though the second act, aliens attack. Not kidding. Aliens attack — a riff on “War of the Worlds” that appears out of nowhere and winds up there too. The film’s technical achievements are impressive, though not nearly eye-pop-ping enough to compensate for the narrative shortcomings outlined above. “Chicken Little” will be showing in 3-D in select venues, which might enhance the experience. (Rated G. Running time: 83 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 4, 2005. Read the original PDF.