A pointless chicken tale

`Chicken Little.'

Chicken Little

Genre: Animation
Director: Mark Dindal
Cast: Voices of Zach Braff, Garry Marshal, Joan Cusack, Steve Zahn
Storyline: You know how it goes... Chicken Little thinks a piece of the sky fell on his head and panic ensues
Bottomline: Slick production, bad story

How interesting can a tale like this be anyway — about a chicken who thinks the sky is falling on his head. Even the children's story was one of the more pointless ones with animals such as Foxy Loxy and Turkey Lurkey tearing around after the neurotic little chicken.

And to make it more Hollywood, the director has thrown in baseball, an attack by aliens and a Hollywood movie of a true story.

The hero of the story, an undersized, fuzzy little fellow who's always getting a raw deal, isn't very enduring either. He looks like someone's breakfast that was allowed to incubate for too long.

Sure, he has problem with former baseball star father Buck Cluck who thinks he's nuts but somehow, you still don't empathise with him.

Like most lazy filmmaking, the film tries to get most of its laughs by spoofing — there are moments from Night Shyamalan's "Signs," Spielberg's "ET" and other alien movies.

SUSAN MUTHALALY

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