Chicken Little

Chicken Little (Director: Mark Dindal)












Dindal directed the little-seen animated Cats Don't Dance, then went on to do the much-seen The Emperor's New Groove. Written by the Brother Bear team of Steve Bencich and Ron J. Friedman, with "additional material" from the team of Robert L. Baird and Dan Gerson (Monsters, Inc.). It comes from the classic fable.

So, Disney has decided to go with their computer animation without Pixar, and if they and Pixar can't get along on their contract, exactly how can you blame them? Every major digitally-animated release since Toy Story has made huge bank--not only from Disney/Pixar but from Dreamworks and recently, Fox. With Sony and Warner Brothers getting into the game next year (now, we're talking animation, so these movies have been in production for years), Disney probably felt like, "Hey, we can do this without Pixar." Chicken Little was to be their tentpole summer release this year, and the last Disney/Pixar film Cars was supposed to be this weekend. Now Cars is a summer release next year.

Chicken Little (Zach Braff) alerts the town that the sky is falling, that he got hit in the head with a piece of sky that looks like a stop sign, but when everything calms down, no one believes him, his father (Garry Marshall) regrettably among them. His friends, Abby Mallard, aka The Ugly Duckling (Joan Cusack), Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn), and the expressive Fish Out of Water (when voiced, it's Dan Molina) are the only ones in town who still like him. Everyone else has made him the town punching bag, and his diminutive frame (by which he has to use clever everyday items to get around) doesn't help. So, the movie really becomes about winning the respect of his father.

Here's where I thought the movie may have been "rushed" as far as an animated film can be "rushed." It goes to great lengths to have Chicken Little join the baseball team and win the respect of his father, only to have him get in the head again and cause the town more alarm and of course, the proof is gone before anyone can get there. The main characters discover a UFO and climb aboard, and a baby, furry, three-eyed alien decides to jump ship. When ma and pa alien want their kid back, this is when the movie starts to build some steam, but it's already at the end.

With an obvious liking of Spielberg, where the movie does a Raiders of the Lost Ark homage (which the movie is so kind to tell you) and a UFO invasion that's like War of the Worlds (which the movie is so kind to tell you), the movie they should have emulated more was E.T. Or hey, go with a legendary animation god Brad Bird's The Iron Giant for inspiration. The cuddly three-eyed alien could have made for a more interesting movie. Just wipe out that baseball scene and let the instant advertisement for plush three-eyed furry alien dolls do the work. That's what Pixar would have done--made a human story with a cute critter who gets in trouble and jeopardizes Chicken Little's bond with his father. This movie could have been so good!

And the reason why I make these suggestions is that this movie isn't really that good in the first place. This isn't a movie I thought, "Wow, that was good...could have been better." No, there's not much funny to be had, almost all of the gags are visual, meaning it's a waste of Braff's made-for-cartoon voice. But it does show a glimpse of brilliance once the alien gets lost--it was too late, though.