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 Chicken Little
by Sandra Kitain
In the words of the actor (Zach Braff) who provides the voice of the cute Chicken Little, "Everyone can relate to feeling like an underdog." Young viewers are meant to relate to the protagonist, who has to deal with the town's ridicule and his father's embarrassment when Chicken first proclaims "the sky is falling."
Chicken Little, Disney's first digital 3-D film, is viewed through chartreuse 3-D glasses. Viewing it becomes an event akin to visiting one of Disney's theme park movies. The story upon which the film is based merely serves as the launching pad for an all-senses assault on the attention spans of young children and their parents. The cumulative folk tale, which comes in the guise of several stories entitled Chicken Little, Chicken Licken, or Henny Penny, tells the simple tale of a silly chicken and her friends from the barnyard (Henny Penny, Turkey Lurkey, and Foxy Loxy), who run around shouting to warn the king that the sky is falling. In one version, The Sky is Falling! by Betty Miles (Simon & Schuster 1998), it turns out that apples are falling, and in the end the characters bake an apple pie. In the Sally Hobson book Chicken Little (Simon & Schuster 1994), Foxy Loxy betrays his friends by tricking them into his lair—and they never appear again.
In order to keep the attention of today's technology-savvy youngsters, who are used to action and fast-paced animation, this Disney version of Chicken Little provides the scenario of an alien-invasion on the scale of Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Adult references are abundant to keep the parents happily engaged, with a cornfield scene right out of the movie Signs and an alien spaceship reminiscent of the one found in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The movie tries to imbue parent-child values, such as the scene when Buck Cluck (Chicken's widowed dad) realizes that he has not always been there for his son.
The movie can be paired with the Disney book adaptation of the story, but students should be made aware of the origins of the tale, which seem to be overtaken by the aliens, the space ships, the special effects, and the music. The musical compositions chosen to accompany the film are geared for laughs on the part of the parents as a kind of karaoke comic relief. The opportunities for character tie-ins in Disney stores abound. There was even a "chicken licken" movie meal available at the theatre.
There are dozens of pop-culture references, such as a Book for Dummies shown when Chicken wants to impress his dad by being a baseball hero. References such as "Have you been to the mall?", talk about cell phones, nods to The Lion King and to Indiana Jones make this film very well connected to today's trends. Moviegoers will hear songs by Carole King, Gloria Gaynor's hit "I Will Survive," and the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" from Saturday Night Fever. These, of course, will be recognized by the parents of the youngsters attending the show.
Teachers can use this movie as a springboard for discussion about how far it has been stretched from its roots as a cumulative folk tale, the original story of Chicken Little. Discuss the character's feelings and how, in the quest for super-entertainment for all ages, the original acorn of the plot becomes enlarged by 3-D glasses, special effects, and computer technology. Make sure that your students get to know the many versions of the Chicken Little story available at your local library. •
Sandra Kitain holds a Masters Degree in Education and will soon also hold a Masters of Library Science Degree. Her career has been centered on getting children and books together, and in that capacity she has been a teacher, an editor, a children's librarian, and a freelance writer. She is a contributing writer to the Continuum Encyclopedia of Young Adult Literature and is currently writing a book for Neal-Schuman Publishers geared for librarians.
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CBC Teacher Movie Reviews
• 6/15/05 - Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - PG
• 7/25/05 - Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
• Brothers Grimm - PG-13
• Chicken Little - G
• 12/9/05 - The Chronicles of Narnia - PG
• 2/10/06 - Curious George (H. A. and Margaret Rey, et. al.)
• 4/7/06 - Hoot (Carl Hiaasen)
• 3/3/06 - Aquamarine (Alice Hoffman)
• 7/21/06 - Lady in the Water (M. Night Shyamalan)
• 7/28/06 - Flicka (Mary O'Hara)
• 8/4/06 - Ant Bully (John Nickle)
• 8/18/06 - Stormbreaker (Anthony Horowitz)
• 8/25/06 - How to Eat Fried Worms (Thomas Rockwell)
Chicken Little
"While it is colorful and jaunty and filled with benign barnyard creatures, the occasional jokes and pop references aimed for designated guardians in the audience are more insulting than entertaining." —Jack Mathews, New York Daily News
"The movie did make me smile. It didn't make me laugh, and it didn't involve my emotions, or the higher regions of my intellect, for that matter." —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times
"It's one of the funniest, most charming and most exhilarating movies in years." —Richard Corliss, Time Magazine
"The invasion material is acceptably funny." —Mike Clark, USA Today
Directed by: Mark Dindal
Written by: Robert L. Baird, additional story material Steve Bencich and Dan Gerson
MPAA rating: Rated G
Runtime: 81 minutes
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