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For Easter this year, you may want to
enjoy one of the few movies in which the
hero is a chick—a chick, that is, in the
literal sense: a little chicken. The
movie is Disney’s computer-animated
comedy Chicken Little, fresh out
on DVD.
Full disclosure: I know one of the of
the co-writers of Chicken Little—Steve
Bencich, a very cool guy who co-wrote
and co-directed a low-budget movie I
acted in some years ago, long before
Disney had ever heard of him. So I would
be likely to say that Chicken Little
was hilarious and charming even if it
wasn’t. Therefore, you’re just going to
have to take my word for it when I tell
you that Chicken Little is
hilarious and charming.
It retells the ancient fable in a modern
suburban setting, and with an ingenious
21st-Century twist: This
time, the sky really is falling,
sort of.
The diminutive C. L., voiced by Zach
Braff of TV’s Scrubs, humiliated
himself and became the town joke the
previous year when he raised a panic by
claiming that he had been hit on the
head with a piece of the firmament. A
year later, he’s still trying to live
the incident down.
A sports triumph gets him back on an
even keel, both at school and with his
embarrassed, insufficiently supportive
father (voiced by Garry Marshall).
But just that quickly, he learns that
what he had previously thought was a
piece of the sky was actually a piece of
an alien spacecraft, that the aliens are
back, and that they have designs on
Earth. Understandably, he has no desire
to play Paul Revere in this crisis, and
he’s pretty sure that no one, his father
included, would believe him anyway.
All sorts of zany slapstick ensues, at
such a fever pitch and with so much
wacky invention that it easily overrides
the potentially tiresome Disney formula
stuff—the victory of the underdog,
winning the approval of the father, and
so on.
The character designs are endearing,
especially C. L. himself, with his tiny
body, enormous round head and unwieldy
glasses, and his pompadour-like junior
coxcomb.
Joan Cusack and Steve Zahn give fine
voice to C. L.’s pals, an “ugly
duckling” named Abby Mallard and a pig
inaccurately named Runt.
Also in the first-rate voice cast are
the likes of Patrick Stewart, Fred
Willard, Wallace Shawn, Catherine
O’Hara, Adam West, Patrick Warburton
and, in one of his last movie roles, the
great Don Knotts, who provides the
fretful voice for Turkey Lurkey—a
turkey-song rather than a swansong.
The DVD—As
usual, the disc is stuffed with ads for
other Disney flicks, but once you’ve
hacked through these, many of the extras
are pretty cute. There are light
documentaries, games, music
videos—including one for the delightful
Barenaked Ladies song “One Little
Slip”—and some clever deleted scenes,
including two alternative openings.
In one, Knotts tells the traditional
story, to amusing 2-D visuals. The
other, from an earlier, discarded
conception of the film, casts the title
role as a girl—a chick, in every sense
of the word.
As to family suitability, Chicken
Little has a few very slightly
off-color jokes, and some of the alien
scenes might possibly scare some of the
littlest viewers.
But in all but the most uptight homes,
this would be excellent family
entertainment. |
