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Friday, November 4, 2005
Disney can't strut over its 'Chicken Little'
Once upon a time, Disney was the animation kingdom. Back in the days when artists painstakingly drew their pictures one frame at a time, Disney turned out one instant classic after another.
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View all photosIn the age of computer animation, that hand-drawn craftsmanship is increasingly looked upon as old-fashioned, but the level of writing and the legacy of strong, vivid characters created out of pen and ink and voice artistry isn't. Only it has been Disney's old partner Pixar that has brought that legacy into the 21st century with its computer-generated features.
"Chicken Little" marks Disney's first solo foray into CGI, and it illustrates just how much Disney has lost its way. Crammed full of visual gags and pop culture jokes and paced like a roller coaster, it's zippy and harried and bursting with whimsical images in place of story.
This take on the familiar fable of a nervous young chick who yells "The sky is falling" turns the tale on its head. The sky really is falling but no one will believe Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff), an imaginative, over-eager chick picked on by classmates, especially not his chagrined father (voice of Garry Marshall). The moral of the original story, about dangers of leaping to conclusions and creating unnecessary panic, becomes a confused message of a New Age lesson in blind faith and paternal pride.
Mark Dindal previously directed "The Emperor's New Groove," a hip, lively and ultimately disposable nothing of a feature-length Looney Tunes farce. "Chicken Little" is hatched from the same egg. Full of colorful characters (notably the hyperventilating, pop-song quoting porky piglet Runt, whined by Steve Zahn) and a barrage of increasingly screechy gags, it's often funny but it flails around like a chicken with its head cut off, flapping and squawking and making a spectacle, but never really going anywhere.
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