Chicken Little: Critic Reviews

Another in a new breed of mass-market comedy that substitutes self-reference for original wit and pop songs for emotional content.

The first computer-animated film from Disney also has the distinction of being a terrible movie a hectic, uninspired pastiche of catch phrases and cliches.

Line by line, scene by scene, visual gag by visual gag, this picture is disappointing: underpowered and dull, even for kids.

The invasion material is acceptably funny.

The animators are - - you almost no longer have to say this - - fabulous and full of mischief, weaving enough ironic amusements into the story for the longer of tooth.

Chicken Little is shiny and peppy, with some solid laughs and dandy vocal performances, but even a small child may sense how forced this movie is.

By the time the sky really does start 'falling' -- courtesy of an alien invasion -- Chicken Little's frantic efforts to stay farm fresh have started to wear on the nerves.

While it is colorful and jaunty and filled with benign barnyard creatures, the occasional jokes and pop references aimed for designated guardians in the audience are more insulting than entertaining.

The movie (directed by Mark Dindal, The Emperor's New Groove) swings from sugar buzz to glucose crash a bit too quickly.

Chicken Little gets a lot of the small things right. It's the bigger picture that gives it trouble.

More than a loving, clever riff on a fable, Chicken Little is a grade-school primer on the language of movies with a capital M.

The movie did make me smile. It didn't make me laugh, and it didn't involve my emotions, or the higher regions of my intellect, for that matter.

In trying to be all things to all popcorn-buyers, Chicken Little comes off as a manic scramble to please everyone.

Animation fans will find this worth the wait, though apparently there's no story-generating software that can tap into the dark recesses of a child's psyche as cannily as Uncle Walt once did.

Compared to the CG gems from Pixar, Chicken Little is stylistically inconsistent, narratively messy, and, well, just not much fun.

While the frenetic pacing might help conceal the movie's flaws, the bizarre twists in the plot are not easily glossed over.

It's almost as if Disney was so nervous about its big chance at computer animation that it crammed in the cheap jokes and disposable music and wayward side plots to make sure it appealed to everyone.

For a movie that's supposed to launch Disney's official CGI era, Chicken Little doesn't stand tall enough.

Under-nourishing and highly derivative.

There's scarcely enough story here for a half-hour TV cartoon.

When Disney can't hit a tried-and-true fairy-tale adaptation out of the park, maybe it's time to give up the ghost and get Pixar back on the phone.

This film's procession of dumb clucks and yuks manages to bring the roof down on occasion, if only through sheer manic exertion.

Chicken Little settles for what's expedient and safe and, over all, lives down to its title.

It is bogged down by many of the problems that have plagued Disney's recent traditional animated features: anonymous voice work, poor plot structure, and the mistaken belief that the Disney brand will elevate anything to a 'must see' level.

A consistently amusing, often inspired family romp.