Disney is hoping this animated comedy from Mark Dindal (The Emperor’s New Groove), about a young chicken who encounters an alien invasion, is gonna jumpstart its new 3-D division. It might sell a few tickets, but mostly Chicken is a mess. Despite years of labor, it plays like a hasty pastiche: It offers little freshness by way of jokes, clever visuals or storylines. The tale is as frantic as the proverbial panicked poultry except when it screeches to a halt for some buzz-killing family-matters talk (the concept of “closure” should never ever be discussed in a kiddie cartoon about talking barnyard animals). And for some reason, the meticulously animated creatures look like … plush stuffed animals. The film features the voices of Zach Braff (as Chicken Little), Joan Cusack, Garry Marshall and Steve Zahn, but the cleverest character — Fish Out of Water, whose head is encased in a water-filled diving helmet — simply burbles. (AH)

This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2005.

E-mail Al Hoff about this story