Chicken Little
Disney divorced itself from Pixar, apparently believing they could take their legacy of quality hand-drawn animation and the knowledgebase of partnering with Pixar and make some magic. In their first solo outing, however, Disney’s Chicken Little falls flat. Despite stellar vocal performances from all the leads (Zach Braff, Garry Marshall, Joan Cusack, Steve Zahn, among many others), despite the tried and true formula of a struggling single parent and adorable, misunderstood child, Chicken Little just cannot fly.
How I wanted it to! Unnerving character design (save for Little and his beautifully performed father, Buck Cluck (Marshall) ) was a visual turnoff. Little had the sweetest, saddest eyes, and despite his alarming macrocephaly, he was quite nimble and adorable. Cluck was a supreme sitcom dad, paunchy and uncomfortable with talking about feelings, a real gem. Their side kicks were anything from generic “animal” to an almost Kricfalusian Abby Mallard (aka the Ugly Duckling), so it was jarring visually. Funny multi-species-in-one-town visual gags were overshadowed by the great lengths the animators had to go to in order to incorporate acorns into everything about the town. They took a page out of Dreanworks’ book and stuffed the credits with recognizable voices and names. They were smart enough to get good voice talent, but it was slightly jarring and/or distracting how distinct recognizable their voices were (except again Marshall and Braff). It had the “oh wow that’s Patrick Stewart” surreality that we “enjoyed” while watching Shark Tale without actually adding anything to the movie by casting him (no disrespect to Stewart). I have to name Don Knotts as a major exception – if ever any actor were meant to play a mentally feeble turkey mayor, it’s Knotts.
Disney’s burgeoning computer animation house even took a page out of Pixar’s book and cast a bunch of voices not from actor pools but from animators and storyboard artists and the like. Don’t get me wrong, these folks did fine. But it all boils down to what they had to work with, which was not much.
John Debney (check imdb.com for his resume in musical manipulation) did his best to compensate for the lack of story, but any feelings I had for Little were from his sad little eyes and Zach Braff’s excellent voice characterization. The movie seemed to be trying to make him both ridiculous and adorable, maybe (if they’re lucky) like Dora was in Finding Nemo. Sure, we can do that, boys! They made fun of her, right? Yes, but Dora was supported by a good story and the mockery of her was mainly self-imposed. Chicken Little has a few neat moments, and it really is a good message movie about the importance of communication and trust between people and friends and so on. But as 81 minutes of entertainment, it’s really not worth the money Disney would like you to spend. Rent it, you’ll feel good that you saw it for $3.50, but not resentful for $9.50.
MPAA Rating G
Release date 11/4/05
Time in minutes 81
Director Mark Dindal
Studio Walt Disney
