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91The visuals are irrepressibly witty and so is the script, which morphs from the classic fable into a spoof on "War of the Worlds." I prefer this version to Spielberg's.
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80A consistently amusing, often inspired family romp.
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75As cluttered as the movie gets before the ending, it's funny throughout, with some 1970s and '80s music thrown in to keep adults happy.
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75This wild and unexpected ride should delight younger children with its bright colors and constant chaos, while adults are likely to be charmed by the witty banter, subtle one-liners and a sweet father-son relationship that highlights the need for good communication.
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75With one of the year's busiest scripts, Little launches 76 zippy minutes.
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75When the picture hits high gear, your qualms vanish one by one, and the script, credited to four writers, grows into its own.
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70Animation fans will find this worth the wait.
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63The 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. It's a perfectly acceptable feature cartoon for kids up to a certain age, but it doesn't have the universal appeal of some of the best recent animation.
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63For all the whiz-bang visuals, however, "Little" could use a little consistency in tone.
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63Shiny and peppy, with some solid laughs and dandy vocal performances, but even a small child may sense how forced this movie is -- how hard it tries to be all things to all audiences.
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63Bogged down by many of the problems that have plagued Disney's recent traditional animated features: anonymous voice work, poor plot structure, and the mistaken belief that the Disney brand will elevate anything to a "must see" level for viewers starved for family friendly fare. If there's a bright side to Chicken Little, it's that kids will love it.
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63The problem is that Chicken Little settles for what's expedient and safe and, over all, lives down to its title.
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60There's more here for the under-tens than over-, but it's still charming, amusing and energetic enough to win you over.
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58It'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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50The studio's fresh corps of CG animators may get up to speed before the current four-picture cycle is completed, but if they don't get better material to work with, the sky will be falling along Dopey Drive.
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50Heavy on celebrity voices, pop culture references and rock tunes and low on memorable characters or imagination, Chicken Little is on a par with such mediocre but popular CGI films as "Madagascar" and "Shark Tale."
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50Chicken Little is entirely lacking in anything "Disneyesque."
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50In the film, the cleverness just isn't there. There's still a lot to like about Chicken Little - the animation is top notch, and the characters, if somewhat recycled, still generate the requisite sympathy and chuckles.
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50What falls in Chicken Little are hopes.
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50Chicken Little is relentlessly cute. That's the good news, and those who consider the word cute anathema may want to look for entertainment elsewhere.
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50Chicken Little is a clunky, arbitrarily plotted, over-caffeinated spritz that, despite colorfully visualizing a world of suburbanized animals, shifts from social-outcast comedy to underdog clichés to War of the Worlds mayhem as if the filmmakers were an improv troupe slamming through genre requests.
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50Turning brief fairy tales into sweeping mini-epics has long been Disney's hallmark, but even for a fable, Chicken Little is thin stuff; it's a brief cautionary tale against alarmism, essentially "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" without any of the poetic irony.
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50If Chicken Little were in 3-D, shown in a theme park as you sit in motion simulators, the lame gags might not be so much of a problem.
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50Chicken Little, though it has its moments, mostly just feels anxious and overreaching. It tries to be all things to all people and fails to be anything to anyone.
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50Lives up to its name by serving up a fraction of what audiences are used to getting in this department from PixarPixar and DreamWorks -- little originality, little humor and little ingratiating characterization.
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50Takes the story one more crank toward the literal. When the thing hits the bird, it turns out, guess what, it is a piece of the sky, the sky is falling. It's like saying: McCarthy was right! Sheesh, revisionist history: It's everywhere!
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40The usual pop-culture jokes, disco tunes, and sarcastic narrator are on hand to prevent atrophy, but by the time the sky really does start "falling"--courtesy of an alien invasion-- Chicken Little's frantic efforts to stay farm fresh have started to wear on the nerves.
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38Kids will love it. It feels fresh and original and mildly subversive, but it's all a cover for the filmmakers not having the patience or confidence to put together a real story with a beginning, middle and end.
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30It is funny at times – the teams for dodgeball break down into "popular" and "unpopular" – but Chicken Little is painful to watch for all ages.
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30A hectic, uninspired pastiche of catchphrases and clichés, with very little wit, inspiration or originality to bring its frantically moving images to genuine life.
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20Seriously, it's a bad sign for your "kids movie" when the kids in question are asking their parents, "When is something going to happen?"
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20If I could find some facet to praise, I'd be glad to do so, but the production's mediocrity is all-pervasive -- story, character, graphic design, even music -- and it all points to a failure of corporate imagination, or maybe just nerve.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 23 out of 56
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Mixed: 9 out of 56
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Negative: 24 out of 56
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JulesB.10