![]() The sky is falling!” is a line from a fairytale story that I, like many, remember from my childhood. A final joke at Hollywood's expense is tickling and features Adam West (TV's "Batman") as the celluloid reincarnation of the heroic little chick. "Chicken Little" ties up its loose ends neatly, although its treatment of its bullying Foxy Loxy (Amy Sedaris, "Bewitched") sets feminism back a few decades. Chicken") makes a welcome appearance as Oakley Oaks mayor, Turkey Lurkey. No stranger to poultry, Don Knotts ("The Ghost and Mr. Woolensworth and Wallace Shawn ("The Princess Bride") is well cast as Principal Fetchit. Patrick Stewart ("X2") has fun with teacher Mr. Braff stretches into his character, while there's no mistaking Zahn and Cusack as Runt and Abby. (The 3-D version which will be shown at a premium price was not seen by this reviewer.) Vocal work is fine. For a kids' film, the colors just don't pop enough. I can only guess that the animators where attempting to get the look of natural light diffusion, but instead backgrounds appear as if from a foggy mist. Little is nicely done, but other characters lack visual refinement. The animation itself is no threat to Pixar. The cleverest homage is of none other than Mickey Mouse himself. The film's second half uses a "War of the Worlds" style alien invasion (and in case we hadn't noticed, we're informed of such by Abby), the cornfield crop circles of "Signs," and the town square clock tower climax of "Back to the Future." "Indiana Jones" makes an earlier appearance and a doggie sports announcer played by Christopher Guest's fellow Spinal Tapper Harry Shearer could be a skewed tip of the hat to "Best in Show." That film's Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara are amusing as aliens Melvin and Tina doing a riff on Oz's wizard. The background visual jokes of "Monsters, Inc.'s" city streets, recently incorporated into "Robots," are checklisted here with a lawn-mowing goat, chameleon traffic signaler and a stork who keeps running into its reflection in a shop window. The filmmakers overdo their film borrowings and references, though. A snippet of the score from Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School" is an unusual musical note. At first, the soundtrack selections seem particularly uninspired ("Everybody Dance Now"), but they end up as part of a running gag where Runt of the Litter is a closet karaoke freak that's actually quite cute. With the alien invasion, the tempo picks up and the aliens themselves add a dose of old-style Warner Brothers humor. It's intermittently entertaining up until that point, with the various animals' characteristics worked into the championship game ('the old tip the cow play') and Little's small stature used to show his ability to overcome obstacles. "The Emperor's New Groove" director Mark Dindal works his material in fits and starts as he tries to establish his father/son dynamic, not getting a firm grasp on the film until his alien invasion kicks in. But his moment in the sun is overshadowed all too soon when another piece of the sky falls and is revealed as a panel from an alien space ship. Coach (director Mark Dindal) keeps him benched all year, but when the championship game comes around, Little surprises everyone. ![]() Instead he tries to win Buck's favor by joining the baseball team. Abby Mallard, better known as Ugly Duckling, is convinced Little should have a heart-to-heart with his father, but the young lad can't seem to bring himself to do it. His dad doesn't understand him and he's made fun of at school, except for his equally unpopular friends. His embarrassed dad, a former high school jock and single parent, tells the outraged townsfolk that his son must have been hit on the head with an acorn. That was when Chicken Little caused havoc in Oakley Oaks screaming that the sky itself was falling. ![]() ![]() After a series of false starts (the cliched 'Once Upon a Time,' a "Lion King" sunrise, the opening of a book) are rejected, Little (voice of Zach Braff, TV's "Scrubs") tells us that we're just going to go straight to the day things took a turn for the worse. The little ones are sure to be delighted if they can weather the plodding start. ![]() "Chicken Little" certainly won't have Pixar running scared, but it's reasonably entertaining once it finds its groove. Friedman ("Brother Bear") take the classic tale, change its message and give it a space age twist in Disney's first fully computer-generated animation. ![]()
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