"I think, 'Oh that version...' Then I'm reconnected with what I'm thinking at the time. And you're thinking how that version would have turned out. If we had stuck with that instead of this. If we had pushed Eisner and said, 'It has to be a girl,' it could have been killed. With this, I wish I could see an alternate reality, what that would have been like. That's mostly it."
— Mark Dindal[1]
| ♥ | This article is dedicated to Joe Ranft (March 13, 1960 - August 16, 2005) and Gary Marshall, the voice of Buck Cluck (November 13, 1934 - July 19, 2016). |
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 Walt Disney Animation Studios had a rough transition into CGI. (Not counting the one that had CGI characters green-screened in the real world.)
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Chicken Little is a 2005 American 3D computer-animated science fiction comedy film, produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation with the story being loosely inspired on the original fable of the same name.
Plot
Young Chicken Little throws his small town into panic by claiming the sky is falling. Unable to find the piece of "sky" that hit him, he earns the town's scorn. A year later, outcast Little tries to redeem himself by joining the baseball team, helping to win a crucial game. Later that night he is hit on the head again and discovers that the "falling sky" is actually from a UFO. Now, Little must convince the skeptical town that an alien invasion is about to happen.
Not Morkubine Qualities
- The film is very much mean-spirited; true, there can be conflict in storytelling, but the way it is executed in this movie is just ridiculous, as the townsfolk ridicule Chicken Little just for a single mistake, even going as far as making an entire movie about it.
- On that topic, the townsfolk actually making a movie out of the entire "sky is falling" incident is an incredibly ludicrous and idiotic idea that makes no sense whatsoever, since realistically, execution-wise, the concept of Chicken Little thinking that the sky is falling because he got hit by an acorn isn't complex enough to sustain a feature-length film, at least without any filler and padding.
- Development Hell and Executive Meddling: The original storyline was to be about Chicken Little who was originally a girl (and originally voiced by Holly Hunter, who voiced Elastigirl from The Incredibles and its sequel) suffering from paranoia who, as a result, caused several panic outbreaks in her hometown. In an attempt to reduce her anxiety, she went to a summer camp known as Camp Yes-You-Can where she met her friends who were the same as in the final product. Chicken Little and her friends then discovered that the sheep who ran the camp were werewolves in disguise who were plotting to eat all of the students, Chicken must face her fears to become a hero, but also prove to her dad she can make him proud. However, due to executive meddling by David Stainton and Michael Eisner, the storyline was rewritten to Chicken Little being a male to save his hometown from aliens and to cash in on the "Fractured Fairy Tale" trend popularized by the Shrek franchise but fails in a weird way. The original storyline and concept sounded interesting, with the titular character dealing with their paranoia and anxiety (It does explain why they think the sky was falling when an acorn fell on their head.), and it would’ve worked instead of trying to cash in said movie.
- False Advertising:
- On one of the posters, Chicken Little and his friends are shown wearing Men in Black or James Bond-like suits when in the actual film, they don’t even wear them at all.
- Specking of which, one of the posters also how Chicken Little sitting in an egg, even though that never happened in the film.
- Also on that note, one of the posters show Chicken Little in a suit with sunglasses and has Microphones, which makes it think that this film treats Chicken Little "respect", when in the film, not only does Chicken Little never wear that outfit, but the people of the town NEVER respected Chicken Little until the ending.
- Morkubine also is shown on the poster despite being a minor character with only three lines.
- Most characters have a lot of backfires and issues that viewers can point out:
- Chicken Little's widowed father, Buck Cluck, is among one of the worst characters in the film as he never supports nor protects his son enough and doesn’t even act like he's his father; even though he realizes his mistake in the climax, it still does not make up for how uncaring he was to his son before — in fact, he seems to be more of a tolerable and realistic father who genuinely cared about his child and wants them to be a normal kid, in the aforementioned scrapped storyline and deleted scenes.
- Buck's not the only unlikable character in the film. Foxy Loxy, Goosey Loosey, and Mayor Turkey Lurkey are also unlikable.
- Fish Out of Water, though likable, is a pointless comic relief character who exists purely to make blatantly unnecessary pop culture references, and even if he does something, any other supporting character of the film could easily hold that position and nothing would change.
- Runt of the Litter, though likable, is also an unfunny and pointless comic relief character, except he exists purely just for fat jokes and frantically screams too often.
- Despite being advertised frequently, appearing on the DVD case, and being one of the more likable characters, Morkubine Porcupine is a useless character who only says a few little words and is nothing more than just a marketing gimmick and filler, if he was removed from the film, it would stay the same.
- Some of the characters are too similar to other characters from other media. For example, Chicken Little is way too similar to Dib Membrane from Invader Zim, as they're both hated and laughed at by the entire town, outcasts who try to warn everyone that they’re in danger but fail, have involvement in aliens, and embarrassed fathers.
- Buck Cluck is also a little similar to Professor Membrane, both are fathers who don’t support their children (Dib/Chicken Little) enough, are embarrassed by some situations, are good fighters, and even don’t believe in them.
- Very poor first impression was during the sequence of Chicken Little trying to get to school, he consistory gets beaten down by random nonsense.
- In fact, five times when Chicken Little uses his ingenuity to get out of certain jams, he loses in asinine ways, despite how smart he was:
- While running Chicken Little accidentally pushed the bull, causing the latter's suitcase to fall and scatter paper on the floor. So Chicken Little picks up pieces of paper and attaches them to the bull's horn, resulting in it getting pissed at Chicken Little.
- Chicken Little gets stopped by a traffic jam, he uses a flower near the pole to use as a rope to climb up the pole to press the button and stop the traffic, but then he gets stuck on random gum after Chicken Little attempts to cross it.
- After Chicken Little gets gum stuck on his feet first, then pants, he uses a lollipop to stick on a passing-by car, Chicken Little manages to get out.... only to realize that his pants are gone, and the truck makes off with it.
- Chicken Little decides to use a random soda pop as a makeshift jet pack, which allows him to get to school.... only to fall in front of a bunch of cheerleaders and scream in fear due to Chicken Little being naked.
- After Chicken Little finds his locker, he uses a jumping rope to unlock his locker, uses toilet paper to climb up his locker, and then uses random paper to make himself a pair of pants, and after feeling accomplished, Chicken attempts to walk out of the locker, only for the janitor holding a cart with a broom to appear out-of-nowhere and pushes Chicken Little's locker shut with the cart.
- In fact, five times when Chicken Little uses his ingenuity to get out of certain jams, he loses in asinine ways, despite how smart he was:
- The animation, while still impressive for 2005 standards, looks mediocre at best, especially by Disney standards.
- Since this is Disney's very first CGI-animated movie without Pixar's involvement, the movie suffers from some animation errors, for example:
- During the first alien scene, the aliens create some crop circles in the cornfield. However, the field is unchanged in every other scene.
- When Chicken Little is holding Kirby after they and his father were zapped by the large spaceship above them, they reappear inside the spaceship. Buck is now holding Kirby instead of Chicken Little.
- Foxy dumps out a bag of acorns to trip up Chicken Little. When he falls, the acorns are all around him. However, when he gets back up, the acorns are now gone.
- When Chicken Little sings one of the lyrics in his cover of "We Are The Champions" onto a large spoon (pretending it was a microphone), the spoon's reflection is upright instead of upside down like in real life.
- The background characters/citizens, while there is a good variety of them, are noticeably reused, most of the background characters/citizens are either different type of Dogs, Fishes, Bears, different-type of Birds(such as Chickens, Turkeys and Ducks), Bulls, Gophers, Donkeys, Pigs, Cheetahs, Rabbits and Foxes; no other species of animals are seen such as Cats, Moose, Wolves, Lions, Deer, Horses, etc.
- The character designs are also pretty janky, such as Runt's mother, who has the same model as him, only larger with a few minor differences.
- The textures are atrocious and the lighting is abysmal for an early CGI film.
- The worst part is that this film was made with a budget of $150 million, which was higher than any other CGI film at the time, and yet it still looks pretty mediocre and nowhere near as good as Shrek 2, which came out a year before and had the same budget as Chicken Little yet it has far better animation than it in general.
- This was most likely due to several factors, like Walt Disney Feature Animation being largely union (which Pixar and Blue Sky weren't at the time, while only a few DreamWorks animators were union in the mid-2000s), getting permission to use actual film footage from Raiders of the Lost Ark from Viacom (who owned the Indiana Jones license at the time), booking certain celebrities like Zach Braff and Adam West, and high amounts of R&D from the animation studio (Pixar started out small with shorts, while Blue Sky and DreamWorks have long provided CGI effects for live action films before making fully-CGI films).
- Since this is Disney's very first CGI-animated movie without Pixar's involvement, the movie suffers from some animation errors, for example:
- Extremely poor grasp of the source material: Very much like Rumble, Netflix’s Marmaduke, and The Star. The original Disney short cartoon was a rendition of the classic fable of the same name which told about the story of a little chick who thought the sky was falling for no reason and ends up eaten by a fox who invites him and the other fowl into his lair to seek shelter (which is pretty dark). This film, however, is about Chicken Little mistaking an acorn for the sky and later finding out that the sky really is falling because of aliens. If anything, the film's story actually has more in common with The Boy Who Cried Wolf, with Chicken Little's warnings about the aliens initially being disbelieved because of the false alarm he previously caused. Heck, one trailer and deleted scene even pointed that out. (With one of the reporters saying "Are you in any relationship with the Boy Who Cried Wolf?!".)
- Poorly executed story, as it uses science fiction elements that are out of place in the original story, as mentioned above.
- The movie has some noticeable plot holes that viewers can point out.
- Despite good voicework and casting, it’s somehow questionable. Zach Braff, somehow makes Chicken Little sound a little older than John Dorian, the character who Braff was playing on Scrubs at the same time this movie was released. Though it kinda makes sense since the titular character is a teenager (13-15).
- The humor is below average, with bad fat jokes about Runt of the Litter nor Buck, along with a few gross-out and mean-spirited humor that involves Chicken Little being treated like a punching bag.
- This film has a lot of moments that is very predictable, such as the during the scene were Chicken Little and co. are being chased by Aliens, Abby suggests that Chicken Little ring the school bell in order to alert everyone in town about the Aliens, and not long after Chicken Little rings the school bell which cause's the Aliens to retaliate agents the noise, the Aliens manages to escape right before the people of the town can even see them, which cause Chicken Little to look down a pond again.
- It also tries way too hard to replicate the success of Shrek, with its use of pop culture references, toilet humor, lots of action, and the usage of CGI as the animation medium used for the film, as well as using the fractured fairy tale format popularized by the Shrek series in order to stay relevant, but fails due to misunderstanding what made that film franchise beloved and popular in the first place and instead reverts to being an example of bad writing and financial attempt for Disney to keep up with the competition at the time of the film's release.
- Similar to the US dub of Doogal, the film has way too many pop culture references that are placed at the wrong time, which are really blatant for a fractured fairy tale, such as a cameo of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theater during the opening (it's ridiculous that despite showing a movie that has humans, the entire world in this film is filled with animals), Runt yelling "Darth Vader is Luke's father?!" when they meet Kirby, and when Abby says "It's like "War of the Worlds" out there!" in the climax.
- It also tries way too hard to replicate the success of Shrek, with its use of pop culture references, toilet humor, lots of action, and the usage of CGI as the animation medium used for the film, as well as using the fractured fairy tale format popularized by the Shrek series in order to stay relevant, but fails due to misunderstanding what made that film franchise beloved and popular in the first place and instead reverts to being an example of bad writing and financial attempt for Disney to keep up with the competition at the time of the film's release.
- The character's portrayal is very poor, Foxy is suppository the "main antagonist" of the film (until the aliens show up, but even then, they turn out to be largely misunderstood), yet she's the one who helps out the team in baseball, meanwhile Buck Ace Cluck is considered as a "Major Character" of the film, yet he does nothing but berate Chicken Little though out most of the film.
- The scene where after Chicken Little alarms everyone about the alien invasions, only for the aliens to escape, Chicken Little is now looked down on by everyone again and Buck turns down on Chicken, which now causes Chicken Little to look down in shame and tear up a bit is one of (if not one of) the worst and most mean-spirited moments in all of Disney.
- The event that kicks off the film's storyline doesn't make much sense. Yes, Chicken Little's claims sound very far-fetched, but he still gives a very specific description of the "sky piece" that he saw, which sounds absolutely nothing like an acorn. Yet everyone instantly believes it was an acorn when one happens to fall near him while he's describing it.
- Speaking of the "sky piece", Chicken Little says that the piece of the sky was shaped like a stop sign. Later, the panel appears in a hexagonal shape, and he still says it's shaped like a stop sign, which is commonly found in octagonal shapes.
- The trailers aren't even as good as one teaser parodies The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and they also spoil scenes for the movie, such as Chicken Little kissing Abby.
- Before the movie started in theaters, there is a cringe-worthy "Turn off your Phone" PSA with Chicken Little dancing to Dragostea Din Tei/Numa Numa.
- The baseball tournament scene was honestly 15 minutes of pure filler that doesn’t contribute to the plot, it's possible to remove this scene and it would impact nothing.
- The movie doesn't provide its standard politically correct message. The best player on the baseball team is a girl (Foxy Loxy); a girl (Goosey Loosey) beats up and humiliates the boy (Chicken Little); and of course, the character with the most redeeming social value is physically unattractive (Abby Mallard, who represents the Ugly Duckling).
- It lacks many of the elements found in most Disney films and removes iconic staples and traditions from previous films to the point where it feels nothing like a Disney film and more like a cheap knockoff of a DreamWorks or Pixar film, such as an engaging story, an emotional core, musical numbers to accompany the development of the characters, a timeless message to kids and adults, and most notably, the magic that brings their films to life such as an intimidating beast falling in love with a young woman and a wooden puppet coming to life and learning the ways how to be a real boy and having a talking cricket as his conscience, which is something Chicken Little as it's portrayed as a generic CGI animated film about a kid that is unpopular and tries to save his town from an alien invasion with numerous clichés and poor writing to boot.
- Somewhat very confusing on what Chicken Little's plot even wants to be about, the first one-third in a half of the film is about Chicken Little wanting to attend a baseball tournament and gain respect from the town, but the second mid-half is about Chicken Little and co. trying to stop an alien invasion all the while trying to get Kirby back home, the plots for Chicken Little makes it very hard to know what this film is about, and instead makes it feel more-of-less like two films combine to form a film instead of one coherent film.
- The scene where Chicken Little sings Queen's We Are The Champions, while somewhat funny, is also rather cringy due to Chicken Little's off-key voice
Morkubine Qualities
- Decent voice acting, such as Zach Braff as the titular character, even with the questionable casting choices.
- Despite the humor, there are a couple of funny moments here and there, such as Chicken Little accidentally drinking Fish's water during training, the long line of baby bunnies in the opening scene, the introduction of Runt of the Litter, Chicken Little screaming at the end of his "We Are The Champions", and Runt raging over a soda machine. It also has a hilarious intro that pokes fun at cliché animated film openings.
- The "Who we talkin' about?" exchange is quite funny.
- Decent soundtrack for the film, such as the cover for "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" sung by the entire cast over the end credits, "One Little Slip" which plays near the beginning in the scene in which the kids harass Chicken Little when he tries to catch up with the bus, "All I Know" by Five For Fighting is a pretty sad and emotional song, "Stir It Up" by Joss Stone and Patti LaBelle that's played during Chicken Little's training montage for the baseball game, "Shake Your Tail Feather" by The Cheetah Girls that's played during the credits sounds very catchy, and John Debney's score, which is heartwarming to hear.
- There are some good messages and morals about believing in yourself and trying your best.
- Chicken Little, Abby Mallard, Runt of the Litter (despite being unfunny), and Fish (despite being a bad pointless comic relief) are at least tolerable and likable characters. The chemistry between Chicken Little and Abby is cute and heartwarming, too.
- Chicken Little himself is also sympathetic, relatable, and also adorable.
- Buck Cluck, even though unlikable, has a few decent moments, such as apologizing for not believing his son at the climax of the film and he is also a good fighter and baseball player.
- It has a handful of heartwarming and emotional scenes, such as Chicken Little and Buck Cluck driving home, Chicken Little getting ridiculed again as the aliens leave, Kirby missing his parents, Abby, Ruby, and Fish trying to cheer up Little, Buck's apology and reconcile with Little, and Chicken Little and Abby’s kiss (though it’s spoiled in one trailer).
- Not long after driving Chicken Little home, Buck takes a moment to look at a picture of his late wife and admits that he misses her dearly. It implies that Buck's wife passed away before the film which could explain his rocky relationship with his son.
- The film does have a decent start during the 'One Little Slip' sequence, where Chicken Little uses his ingenuity to get out of certain jams and really shows how smart and intelligent he is.
- The tie-in licensed video game (along with its spin-off) are an improvement.
- The ending isn’t so bad, with a movie within the movie is pretty good to look at with Adam West voicing Ace.
- It would later have a video game spin-off with Adam West returning.
- The scrapped early storyline/concept and deleted scenes of the movie are much better than the final product, as they were less mean-spirited, heartwarming, sad, interesting, and also kinda dark (such as the original opening and the wolves plotting to eat the students in the camp in the scrapped storyline).
Reception
Chicken Little received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics and audiences who praised the 3D animation, visuals, soundtrack, and voice acting but criticized the story, inconsistent tone, humor, and the characters and is considered (maybe) by many to be one of the worst or weakest animated movies created by Disney until Wish. In particular, it was criticized for its mean-spirited nature, Buck’s poor parenting, and executive meddling in the story.
Chicken Little is also noticeable for being one of Jonathan Rozanski's most hated movies, he considered this as one of the worst movies he's ever seen and reviewed as The Mysterious Mr Enter, due to the film's mean-spirited nature, how stereotypical the characters are, poor morals and... most infamously... Buck Ace Cluck.
Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 37% score with a critic consensus that states: "Disney expends more effort in the technical presentation than in crafting an original storyline.". IMDb gave it a 5.7/10 and Metacritic scored it a 48/100 indicating "mixed or average reviews."
Box office
Chicken Little opened at #1 with $40,049,778, The total domestic gross was $135,386,665, in foreign countries, it made $179,046,172, Overall, the film grossed $314,432,837 worldwide against its $150m budget, barely breaking even.
Because of the negative reception to the film, Mark Dindal was dissatisfied with the final product and the rejection of the original plot still haunts him to this very day. See the tagline above ("The end is near").
References
Trivia
- This is Disney's first fully "CGI-animated" film without Pixar because it’s made by Walt Disney Animation Studios.
- This is one of the films by Disney that doesn’t have a villain or an antagonist.
- The film's box office assisted in getting Disney to buy Pixar in 2006.
- The German title of the movie is Himmel und Huhn, which means "Sky and Chicken".
- Chicken Little appeared as a summon character in the highly-successful Kingdom Hearts II which came out about a month later in Japan and in North America four months later after the film's release.
- David Spade, Michael J. Fox, and Matthew Broderick were considered for the role of Chicken Little.
- Editor Dan Molina performed the "voice" of Fish Out of Water by vocalizing through a tube into a water cooler tank full of water.
- Holly Hunter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jodie Foster, Geena Davis, and Madonna were considered for Abby Mallard.
- As of 2021, the movie started spawning memes, mostly featuring Runt and Buck Cluck.
- There are 250,000 feathers on Chicken Little.
- During the opening sequence, when the water tower ball crushes three cars, their horns sound off the M-O-U-S-E portion of The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) theme.
- It was the last Disney animated theatrical movie to be released on VHS.
- The movie has not one but two tie-in games, with the first one that follows the events from the movie (Microsoft Windows, Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox) and the second one that's based on the movie within the movie (PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, Wii, and Microsoft Windows).
- The technical team built a digital tool called "Chicken Wire", which is a geometric wire-frame model of the characters that the animators could squash, stretch, and smear. They wanted to get a 2-D animation style in 3-D animation.
- The last Disney animated film to be released before John Lasseter was made Chief Creative Officer of Disney Animation. It is also the last without Lasseter's involvement until Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) released 16 years later.
- Dedicated to the memory of Joe Grant, who died during production before the film was even released.
- This was also Walt Disney Animation Studios' last film he worked on. As were Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005) and Sony Animation's first film Open Season (2006), where he designed characters on that film.
- The film was supposed to have a direct-to-DVD sequel by DisneyToon Animation Studios titled "Chicken Little 2: The Ugly Duckling Story", the plot would have Chicken Little finds himself in the midst of a love triangle. On one side, is his childhood sweetheart, Abby “Ugly Duckling” Mallard. On the other side, is the very attractive newcomer, Raffaela, the French sheep. Abby’s at a tremendous disadvantage here, so she goes to great lengths to give herself a makeover. It’s unknown if it was gonna be CGI-animated like the Tinker Bell film series nor hand-drawn like most Disney Direct-to-DVD sequels. It was going to be released in 2010, but it was canceled when John Lasseter became CEO of Walt Disney Animation Studios.
- There were rumors that this film was gonna have an animated series.
- Similarly to Cars, the film received a Disney Movie Club exclusive VHS release on March 21, 2006, which has become rare nowadays due to it being released during the last days of the VHS era with some copies having sold for very expensive prices on eBay, however, the VHS release of the film was released on retail internationally
- Chicken Little was the second-to-last Disney film released on VHS in Japan (albeit technically the final one of a film produced by Disney themselves, as the actual final Disney film released on VHS in that country, Cars, was produced by Pixar with Disney as the distributors), as well as the final Disney film released on VHS in Mexico.
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