Chicken Little is a film about a small bird who is right and a whole town that will not hear it. Disney released it on November 4, 2005, after a premiere at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on October 30. Mark Dindal directed. The running time is 81 minutes. The sky, as it turns out, is falling.
Trailer, via Movie-List.com.
The Bell in Oakey Oaks
The story starts in the town of Oakey Oaks, where Chicken Little rings the school bell and tells everyone to run for their lives. The town panics. The Head of the Fire Department calms him down and asks what happened. Chicken Little explains that a piece of the sky fell on his head while he sat under the big oak tree in the town square. He cannot find the piece. His widowed father, Buck “Ace” Cluck, a former high school baseball star, assumes it was an acorn. Chicken Little becomes the laughingstock of Oakey Oaks.
A year later he is infamous for ruining things by accident. His friends are the other outcasts: Abby Mallard, nicknamed “The Ugly Duckling,” Runt, an enormous and cowardly pig, and Fish Out of Water, who wears a helmet full of tap water to breathe. Chicken Little joins the school baseball team to win back his reputation and his father’s pride.
It works, briefly. He sits until the ninth inning of the last game, hits the ball, rounds the bases and slides into home plate. The umpire brushes away the dust and finds Chicken Little’s foot touching the plate. He is safe. Oakey Oaks wins the pennant and hails him as a hero.
That night the same piece of sky hits him again. It is a mysterious panel that blends into the background, which explains why he could not find it the first time. He calls his friends.
A Cast Built for the Second Row
The voice cast is the film’s sturdiest part, and it is not close. Zach Braff plays Chicken Little. Garry Marshall plays Buck Cluck. Don Knotts plays Mayor Turkey Lurkey. Amy Sedaris plays Foxy Loxy. Steve Zahn plays Runt of the Litter. Joan Cusack plays Abby Mallard. Patrick Stewart plays Mr. Woolensworth. Fred Willard and Catherine O’Hara play Melvin and Tina, the alien parents. Wallace Shawn plays Principal Fetchit. Harry Shearer plays the Dog Announcer. Mark Walton plays Goosey Loosey.
Braff auditioned against forty actors. Dindal said Braff “pitched his voice slightly to sound like a junior high kid. Right there, that was really unique — and then he had such great energy.” The role was first written as a female character, and Holly Hunter voiced it for eight months before the decision to make Chicken Little male. Sean Hayes was reported in April 2002 as voicing a character called the Ugly Duckling; that character was rewritten as female and became Abby Mallard. Katie Finneran was announced as Goosey Loosey in December 2003 and left halfway through production. Disney storyboard artist Mark Walton replaced her.
That is a lot of churn behind a movie that runs 81 minutes.
The First Fully Computer-Animated Disney Feature
Chicken Little was animated in-house at Walt Disney Feature Animation’s headquarters in Burbank, California. It was Disney Animation’s first fully computer-animated feature. The 1943 Disney short had already adapted the folk tale, and this version is loosely inspired by “Henny Penny.”
It was also the first mainstream theatrical release in Digital 3-D. Around 100 theaters worldwide were fitted with new 3-D projectors to screen it. That detail matters more than most of what happens on screen.
Here is how the film sits against the Disney short it was following, and against the format it was selling:
| Chicken Little (2005) | The 1943 Disney short | Digital 3-D release | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Format | Fully computer-animated | Traditional short | 3-D projection |
| Source | “Henny Penny,” loosely | “Henny Penny” | Same film, new projectors |
| Scale | 81 minutes, feature | Short | Around 100 theaters worldwide |
| Cast | Braff, Cusack, Zahn, Marshall, Knotts, Sedaris | — | Same cast, same cut |
The table tells the story the marketing told: this was a technology launch wearing a folk tale as a coat.
What the Numbers Actually Say
Chicken Little grossed $314 million and became the second-highest-grossing animated film of 2005. Reviews were mixed. The TMDB audience score is 5.9/10, drawn from 4,258 votes.
A $314 million gross on a mixed reception is not a contradiction. It is a release date doing its job. Disney put its first computer-animated feature into theaters with 100 3-D screens behind it, and audiences showed up to see what the studio had built. The film was the product. The format was the pitch.
The film is not a disaster. Knotts, Sedaris and Cusack are funny in parts built for them, and the baseball sequence has a real punchline: the umpire has to clear the dust before he can rule. But the plot asks us to care about a town that turns on a child twice, then hands him a pennant and a father’s approval in the same night. Buck Cluck’s doubt is the only live wire in the script.
The tagline promises “The end is near.”
What the source supports is narrower than the marketing. The film is a technical milestone with a strong bench of voice actors and a plot that resolves on a panel, not on the town that doubted him. The casting history is the most documented part of the production. What reaches the screen is a competent feature that happened to be first.
5.9 of 10.
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