'Chicken Little,' you're no 'Toy Story'

Disney's digital animation can't bump Pixar in the pecking order

November 04, 2005|Ty Burr, Globe Staff

We bring you this breaking business report: The sky is falling.

At least over the house that Walt built. The word is that negotiations between Pixar and the Walt Disney Company are being put on hold this weekend pending the release of ''Chicken Little," Disney's first in-house attempt at a digital-animation blockbuster along the lines of Pixar's ''The Incredibles" and ''Toy Story" (and DreamWorks' ''Shrek" and ''Shark Tale").

I repeat: The sky is falling. ''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 -- how hard it tries to be all things to all audiences. As for parents, they won't be able to miss the baling wire holding the story together. The film is being released to selected theaters in ''Disney Digital 3D" as well as the regular 2-D version this critic watched, and, in truth, it needs all the bells and whistles it can get.

The primary problem with ''Chicken Little" is that it's two movies, each of which cancels out the other. The first half is a gentle fable about a misfit cockerel (voice of ''Scrubs" star Zach Braff) who can't seem to bond with his kindly jock dad, Buck Cluck (Garry Marshall); there's much talk of ''closure" between the sight gags, and the film occasionally stops in its chicken tracks so characters can share their emotions while listening to drippy soundtrack songs.

Older kids will get itchy with all this touchy-feely stuff even as their younger siblings may find it reassuring. Those same toddlers, however, will probably freak when the movie suddenly turns into ''War of the Worlds Jr."

See, Chicken Little was bopped on the head by a sky-colored hexagon that promptly vanished, causing no end of derision from the good animal folk of Oakey Oaks. A year passes, and the movie seems to climax early with a baseball game in which the little fella unexpectedly saves the day. (I hope I'm not spoiling things for grown-ups reading this. As for you kids, put the newspaper down right now and walk away.) Then he's hit by another sky-tile, and this time he has back-up witnesses in his nerdy school pals Abby ''Ugly Duckling" Mallard (Joan Cusack), neurotic Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn), and Fish Out of Water (Dan Molina), a guppy in a water-filled diving helmet.