On the (Chicken Wire) Fence: Was Disney’s Chicken Little Really that Bad an Egg?

It’s now a whole decade since Disney hatched what is arguably their most resented animated feature film, Chicken Little. With a slew of pop culture references, characters based solely on hyperbolic, one-dimensional stereotypes, and a plot that meanders and ultimately peters out during its final moments, Disney’s 46^th animated feature left a lot to be desired. For many who grew up with the Renaissance era of the 1990s, this film ironically represented a major step backwards, despite being their first to be entirely computer animated. But is it really all that bad?

During the mid-2000s, it was noticeable that the sky wasn’t the only thing falling – the quality of the average Disney flick had plundered to new depths with the lazily-constructed Home on the Range (2004). While the soundtrack and the voice acting remained top notch, the animation and the narrative were both comparably inferior in relation to previous efforts of the last decade. It’s not that bad, but as the film to (at least temporarily) maintain the title of the last traditionally animated feature in the pipeline, it failed to impress for obvious reasons. And that’s probably why it initially garnered a lot of hatred. Likewise, Chicken Little was expected to herald a new age of animation and, well, to put it nicely, the chicken merely made it to the middle of the road and no further, resulting in a flick that received mixed to negative responses upon release.

Now, to some extent, this is understandable. Not all of the characters are very likeable. Buck Cluck, Chicken Little’s neglectful father, is presented as being just that – neglectful – with little to no redeeming qualities whatsoever. That said, in actuality, characters such as this do exist in real life, and his character is at the very least believable. His failure to appreciate his son derives from his embarrassment over his son’s allegedly delusional behaviour in the past – and his success as a baseball star would naturally imply he, himself, has been raised with a pressured mentality to ‘win or lose’, and as such he perceives his son to be inferior, as he simply doesn’t ‘match up’ to the standards that were expected of him. It’s harsh, yes, but believable, and even heart-breaking. There are also a fair few gags throughout the film that fall flat on their face – some of which are frankly cringe-worthy (the fat jokes about Runt and Chicken Little’s incoherent babbling spring to mind), but otherwise I see nothing overly flawed or offensive about the script itself. What ultimately disappoints is the narrative.

Unlike other reviewers seem to have noted, I actually quite like the ‘alien invasion’ twist. Some argue that it disturbs the movie’s flow. Up until about halfway, the ‘sky is falling’ aspect is presented as more of a sub-plot, but the emergence of an alien invasion halfway through the feature corroborates Chicken Little’s alarm at having found a ‘piece of the sky’, and therefore adds to the cathartic turmoil of the protagonist to form a more profound association with his father (being as his incredulity is based solely on his son’s having previously been ridiculed as delusional). What I personally find disappointing is the film’s conclusion. It’s feeble and lazy and ultimately renders the entirety of the ‘alien invasion’ aspect – heck, even the entire film – completely pointless. Until the final scenes, the film’s not that bad. It’s nothing special, but its conclusion is one of the most anticlimactic (not to mention stupid) that I’ve ever seen.

So maybe Disney’s first CG film is not all it was cracked up to be, but it’s not nearly as bad as you’d think after having read review after review berating it. The pop culture references are painfully obvious, and the film maintains a somewhat cynical undertone through the presentation of Buck Cluck. But that’s about the worst of it. The plot just about makes sense, though its meandering and conclusion make it horrifically unmemorable. However, while I’m willing to admit that it’s most definitely one of Disney’s worst efforts, you could still do a whole lot worse.