When I saw the trailers for this film, I was under whelmed, to say the least, and hoped my kids wouldn't ask me to go see it. Amazingly, neither of them were impressed with the trailers either, and so they didn't.
But as fate would have it, I received free tickets to a sneak preview, and having nothing to risk except gas and popcorn money, decided to take the kids to see "Chicken Little." In short: I found the movie surprisingly enjoyable, and liked it a little more than the Wallace & Gromit film we saw just a week earlier.
As one might expect, the movie "Chicken Little" takes the concept of the "sky is falling" to a whole new level for the 21st century, this time involving aliens from outer space, baseball, and high school nerds.
The film is computer animated, but not a Pixar film. The look of the film is very "cartooney" and all the characters are various anthromorphized farm and woodland animals. The plot is simple and straightforward: Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff) is a nerdy little high school chicken/kid (though very cute!) who just can't seem to do anything right. Like in so many children's films, one, if not both parents are missing, and in Chicken Little's case it is his mother. So poor Chicken Little is stuck being raised by his father Buck (voiced by Garry Marshall), a one-time high school baseball hero who is often finds himself disappointed by the antics of his nerdy (but cute!) little son, a disappointment Chicken Little feels all too acutely.
The event that really strained their relationship is when Chicken Little sounded the town alarm after being hit in the head by "a piece of the sky." Sadly, this mishap happened under one of the town's stately oak trees, and so when Chicken Little's father comes to the scene, he insists that his son was just hit in the head by one of the acorns laying on the ground, and mistook it for being a piece of the sky. In other words, dad does damage control, and lets his son, along with his son's credibility, dangle in the wind. I'm afraid this review would give away a bit too much in stating what the "piece of the sky" actually is...
Because the event is not forgotten, but instead becomes the ultimate "in" joke, (even becoming a Hollywood movie!) poor Chicken Little is forced to live under the shroud of shame that the false alarm brought upon him. He then decides to find some way, some means to show himself worthy to his father, so that he might erase the shame of "the sky is falling" incident. That's were the baseball and the space aliens come in.
Chicken Little also gets a little help from his friends: the ugly duckling Abby Mallard (Joan Cusack), a fat pig named 'Runt' Of The Litter (Steve Zahn), and a cute, voiceless 'Fish' Out Of Water , who wears a special diving mask to help him "breath" on landthink the opposite of Sponge Bob's Sandy Squirrel.
"Chicken Little" starts rather slow, and is very dialog heavy for an animated kid's flick. The set-up is slow and deliberate, and there isn't much in the way of the typical slapstick and one-liners to keep things light. However, the long slow setup really pays-off at the end of the film, which is gut-busting hilarious! As a matter of fact, it was one of the best endings of a film I've seen since "Napoleon Dynamite." They climaxed the fun and excitement at exactly the right moment, and kept the ending very sweet and enjoyable. Too often, Hollywood films fail to end convincingly, or draw out the ending far too long; this film deftly manages to avoid either extreme.
There is a downside to "Chicken Little" however, and that is the strange fact that it's really not a kids' film, though there's nothing in it that would jeopardize the well-earned "G" rating. The film's core message is a child's need for unconditional love and support from a parent, especially a father. This is quite a powerful and heavy issue, and one that is difficult for young children to fully comprehend, let alone many adults! (Think of "Field of Dreams" in cartoon format.) Also, there are a lot of jokes that depend one having a fairly good knowledge of 70's and 80's pop culture and pop music (especially disco), which most people under 40 simply do not have. That makes the movie rather fun for the adults, but goes right over the kiddies' heads. My own children found most of the film rather boring, and only liked the ending.
One thing I especially enjoyed is a bit of voice-over work done by none other than Adam West, who is famous for playing Batman on the 60's era TV show by the same name. I recognized the voice immediately, and it made me smile, but my children wouldn't know Adam West from Mae West, and the voice-over work meant nothing too them. Again, it plays far better to adults than it does to children! But my kids don't write reviews for IMDb, and I do. And I liked the film enough to seriously consider buying the DVD when it comes out, even if I have to watch it alone!
Rating: A solid 7 out of 10.
But as fate would have it, I received free tickets to a sneak preview, and having nothing to risk except gas and popcorn money, decided to take the kids to see "Chicken Little." In short: I found the movie surprisingly enjoyable, and liked it a little more than the Wallace & Gromit film we saw just a week earlier.
As one might expect, the movie "Chicken Little" takes the concept of the "sky is falling" to a whole new level for the 21st century, this time involving aliens from outer space, baseball, and high school nerds.
The film is computer animated, but not a Pixar film. The look of the film is very "cartooney" and all the characters are various anthromorphized farm and woodland animals. The plot is simple and straightforward: Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff) is a nerdy little high school chicken/kid (though very cute!) who just can't seem to do anything right. Like in so many children's films, one, if not both parents are missing, and in Chicken Little's case it is his mother. So poor Chicken Little is stuck being raised by his father Buck (voiced by Garry Marshall), a one-time high school baseball hero who is often finds himself disappointed by the antics of his nerdy (but cute!) little son, a disappointment Chicken Little feels all too acutely.
The event that really strained their relationship is when Chicken Little sounded the town alarm after being hit in the head by "a piece of the sky." Sadly, this mishap happened under one of the town's stately oak trees, and so when Chicken Little's father comes to the scene, he insists that his son was just hit in the head by one of the acorns laying on the ground, and mistook it for being a piece of the sky. In other words, dad does damage control, and lets his son, along with his son's credibility, dangle in the wind. I'm afraid this review would give away a bit too much in stating what the "piece of the sky" actually is...
Because the event is not forgotten, but instead becomes the ultimate "in" joke, (even becoming a Hollywood movie!) poor Chicken Little is forced to live under the shroud of shame that the false alarm brought upon him. He then decides to find some way, some means to show himself worthy to his father, so that he might erase the shame of "the sky is falling" incident. That's were the baseball and the space aliens come in.
Chicken Little also gets a little help from his friends: the ugly duckling Abby Mallard (Joan Cusack), a fat pig named 'Runt' Of The Litter (Steve Zahn), and a cute, voiceless 'Fish' Out Of Water , who wears a special diving mask to help him "breath" on landthink the opposite of Sponge Bob's Sandy Squirrel.
"Chicken Little" starts rather slow, and is very dialog heavy for an animated kid's flick. The set-up is slow and deliberate, and there isn't much in the way of the typical slapstick and one-liners to keep things light. However, the long slow setup really pays-off at the end of the film, which is gut-busting hilarious! As a matter of fact, it was one of the best endings of a film I've seen since "Napoleon Dynamite." They climaxed the fun and excitement at exactly the right moment, and kept the ending very sweet and enjoyable. Too often, Hollywood films fail to end convincingly, or draw out the ending far too long; this film deftly manages to avoid either extreme.
There is a downside to "Chicken Little" however, and that is the strange fact that it's really not a kids' film, though there's nothing in it that would jeopardize the well-earned "G" rating. The film's core message is a child's need for unconditional love and support from a parent, especially a father. This is quite a powerful and heavy issue, and one that is difficult for young children to fully comprehend, let alone many adults! (Think of "Field of Dreams" in cartoon format.) Also, there are a lot of jokes that depend one having a fairly good knowledge of 70's and 80's pop culture and pop music (especially disco), which most people under 40 simply do not have. That makes the movie rather fun for the adults, but goes right over the kiddies' heads. My own children found most of the film rather boring, and only liked the ending.
One thing I especially enjoyed is a bit of voice-over work done by none other than Adam West, who is famous for playing Batman on the 60's era TV show by the same name. I recognized the voice immediately, and it made me smile, but my children wouldn't know Adam West from Mae West, and the voice-over work meant nothing too them. Again, it plays far better to adults than it does to children! But my kids don't write reviews for IMDb, and I do. And I liked the film enough to seriously consider buying the DVD when it comes out, even if I have to watch it alone!
Rating: A solid 7 out of 10.