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Chicken Little Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: G (for intense boxing violence and some language) Theater release: November 04, 2005 by Walt Disney Pictures Directed by: Mark Dindal Runtime: 1 hour 17 minutes Cast: Featuring the voice talents of Zach Braff (Chicken Little), Garry Marshall (Buck Cluck), Don Knotts (Mayor Turkey Lurkey), Steve Zahn (Runt of the Litter), Joan Cusack (Abby Mallard), Harry Shearer (Dog Announcer) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

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My seven-year-old son, Benjamin, says Chicken Little is the best movie he's ever seen. (He says this about every movie he genuinely likes, so we know he genuinely likes Chicken Little.) He also says it's a little bit scary, but mostly funny. By "a little bit scary" he means, "There was a part where I hid my face in my mom's arm and asked if we could leave, but I got over it." We may translate "mostly funny" as "I laughed out loud lots of times and even snorted once or twice."

Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff) is convinced the sky is falling

There are a few other things you should probably know about Chicken Little. It is not a sequel to Chicken Run; it has nothing to do with that stop-motion animation hit from Aardman Animations (the same studio behind Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit). It is, in fact, a Disney movie—the very first Disney feature created in-house with 3-D computer animation (rather than traditional 2-D, which Disney has mastered for decades).

Chicken Little is essentially Disney's bid to compete with 3-D standard bearers Pixar (Toy Story 1 & 2, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles) and DreamWorks (the Shreks). (Pixar, in fact, has been distributing its films under the Disney name, but that partnership could be on the brink of dissolving, leaving Disney to fend for itself in the 3-D genre.) Time—and sales of movie tickets and Happy Meal toys—will tell if the House of Mouse has orchestrated a successful coup. What's more important to the average parent trying to decide whether to drop $60 on a family visit to the cineplex is whether Chicken Little is a good movie. Benjamin says "yes." His mom says "sort of."

Our protagonist with his friends, Fish Out of Water (Dan Molina) and Abby Mallard (Joan Cusack)

The film's basic premise comes from the old Chicken Little fable, and it opens with a frenetic scene in which the Little Chicken himself—a spunky but misunderstood preteen of teeny proportions—is hit on the head by a piece of sky, and naturally, sounds the town's alarm. (Chicken Little is voiced by Scrub's Zach Braff, who is plucky and pathetic in all the right places—but I found it confusing to hear an adult voice coming from the young protagonist. Of course, true verisimilitude would require that an actual chicken voice the lead character, so I suppose age is a minor quibble.) When the dust settles and no evidence of fallen firmament can be found, Chicken Little quickly and infamously becomes the town's laughingstock. His single (presumably widowed) dad, Buck Cluck (voiced with great befuddled bluster by Garry Marshall), tries to smooth things over, but his obvious embarrassment at the whole incident creates a gulf between father and son. Chicken Little is desperate to earn the approval of both his dad and his generally boorish classmates, but his luck gets worse the harder he tries, and he bounces from one humiliating scenario to another, losing his knickers and his pride in the process.

Fortunately, our little hero has a band of misfit buddies at his side. Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn) is rotund even for a pig, but he loves Streisand and old disco tunes even more than corn. Fish Out of Water (glubbed by film editor Dan Molina) attends school in a diving helmet worn to keep water in and communicates via elaborate pantomime sequences that provide some of the film's funniest moments. Abby Mallard (the always effective Joan Cusack) is a teen-magazine-reading wannabe-therapist with an obvious crush on Chicken Little. When the school gym teacher divides the kids into two teams—Popular and Unpopular—Chicken Little and all his buddies are destined for the losing side. But at least they have each other.

Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn) is good for a few, ahem, big laughs

Chicken Little's fortunes finally change when he manages, through a miraculous series of silly events, to score the winning run in a baseball championship of epic importance to the townsfolk. Father and son are reconnected, peer acceptance is extended, and all is well—until the sky falls once again, and Chicken Little realizes he is the only one who can save the planet from alien invasion. The film careens recklessly from this point on into a confusing but amusing (and, for younger kids, scary) spoof of War of the Worlds.

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