Post by Harkovast on Apr 25, 2016 15:15:57 GMT
Chicken Little
These days we all think of Disney as a massive media juggernaut that can basically do no wrong.
They churn out marvel movies every other week that never fail to make cash and their animated movies blow critics and audiences away.
Have you guys seen Zootopia? Wasn't Zootopia great? I loved that film. Yeah, I know, Hark likes a film about talking animals being a metaphor for racism, how surprising. But that film was awesome, wasn't it?
But did you know that it wasn't the first attempt of Disney to do a movie where everyone is a talking animal?
Of course you did... you've seen Disney's classic Robin hood.
But did you know they made ANOTHER more recent film about a world full of talking animals?
Yes, of course you did, you read the title of this article so you already know it's called Chicken Little.
But outside of that, why don't we hear about this film?
It was Disney's first fully CGI movie and it made over $300 million.
Well using the same super detective powers that led you know in advance that I was building towards Chicken Little, you'll realise that this review appearing in the Hate Section means is wasn't exactly a critical darling.
What's so bad about the film?
Well first off lets look at the character designs.
These guys are ugly as fuck.
Like repellently ugly.
I recoil from these characters in horror.
Yes the animation hasn't aged well at all, but Toy Story came out before this and that still looks appealing. This movie looked horrible ugly at the time.
Worst of all are the background characters.
These things (I can't bring myself to call them animals) look like they were crafted out of plasticine. They stand around with blank expressions, often repeating the same animation unenthusiastically. Their bloated heads don't even seem to fit correctly on their misplaced necks.
Let's compare and contrast...
This is Clawhauser from Zootopia. He's a big, camp, loveable police cheetah. What a fun, whimsical character.
And this is some horrific obomination from the depths of hell staring into your soul with its dead, glassy eyes.
Here's Judy Hopps from Zootopia. What an expressive, likeable character design. Go Judy! You chase your dreams! You will be a great police officer yet!
The dream this thing should follow is to wish for a mercifully quick death to end its nightmarish existance.
And finally-
Here's is Nick Wilde. Looking good Nick! Just from this image we can tell he's going to be a loveable rouge and a cool dude.
Who wouldn't want to see what kind of crazy scrapes this guy gets into?
And here we have what I assume to be cure for someone being a furry. Can't stop yiffing? Look at this. You will be unyiffed.
I want, on a very deep, primal level, to club this creature to death with a piece of wood.
If their physical hideousness wasn't off putting enough, the characters are generally have extremely unpleasant personalities. The towns people are nasty, cruel as well as mind bogglingly stupid.
The plot sets off with Chicken Little sounding an alarm bell in the town and sending all the horrible, ugly creatures into a blind panic.
They rush around, crash their cars, knock over a water tower and destroy buildings in a frenzy of insanity.
They are then all furiously angry with Chicken Little and he becomes the town pariah.
At this point the animals not seem cruel and bullying, they seem incredibly stupid, panicky and hypocritical.
Chicken Little told them they were in danger, he never said destroy the fucking town like idiots!
Chicken Little's father (called Buck Cluck...I don't know why him and Chicken Little don't share a last name) now considers Chicken Little an embarrassment and passive aggressively shames him through out the movie. Interestingly the film makes it clear we are supposed to find Buck sympathetic...but they probably didn't intend for us to hate the entire town either.
Chicken Little comes up with a plan to make everyone like him again...by winning the big baseball game.
This seems hopeless as Chicken Little is so small and puny but he trains a lot and (despite arrogantly ignoring everyone's advice not to swing) hits a home run and wins the big game, redeeming himself to the town and gaining his fathers (very conditional) love once again.
Now you might be thinking "wow, that was a pretty thin plot."
And you would be right.
However, this is where things get interesting.
That isn't the end of the movie. We are only 30 something minutes in, probably about a third of the way through.
So here we have a movie where the central tension and conflict has all been resolved a third of the way through, what do we do now?
Have aliens invade of course!
No, I'm not joking.
Aliens invade.
Now you might be thinking that there must have been some earlier signs in the movie that hinted at alien involvement that will now pay off. Sadly the amazing detective skills you showed at the start of this article have failed you, as there is no hint whatsoever.
It turns out Chicken Little's warnings about the sky falling were caused by a piece falling off an alien space ship.
Now, fairs fair, the idea of turning the Chicken Little story into one about aliens is kind of clever (changing the meaning of the sky falling). Unfortunately there is a certain logic to story telling that this film disregards. When a story builds up to something and that event resolves...you can't just say "and then more unrelated things happen" and keep it going. Well okay, you CAN do that. But then you end up making Chicken Little.
The aliens are big scary robots who are making crop circles and hiding above the town in camouflaged space ships. Chicken Little and his friends end up getting followed by a small furry alien and this provokes an alien attack.
If you suspected that the furry alien is a baby alien, and inside the robots they are all cute and furry then your detective skills have returned once more. This eye rolling, obvious 'twist' serves to surprise literally no one in the audience over the age of five.
"But Hark, maybe this film is meant for little five year olds."
Yes because five year olds love boring scenes of characters talking, filmed at a flat angle, where hideous, unlikeable creatures talk about their relationships.
No? Well shucks, this movie might be in trouble then.
The films climax actually had one scene I enjoyed.
The aliens launch their attack and proceed to disintegrate all the towns people.
This was great! These unlikeable ugly little shits were just getting obliterated.
They had ignored and belittled poor Chicken Little but now they were paying the price for their hubris.
Unfortunately this is then completely spoiled when it turns out they weren't killing the animals, just teleporting them and in the end they put all the bastards back again.
Fuck.
This film is boring, uninspired, lazy but most of all confusing. Not confusing in terms of the plot being complicated, its just confusing that anyone deliberately chose to structure a story so poorly!
I saw this movie at the cinema for free and I still felt ripped off. That was time I wouldn't get back!
Disney laid an egg with this one. Any talent at the company had obviously flown the coup. Whoever was involved should go cluck themselves.
My rating?
Chicken Shit.
These days we all think of Disney as a massive media juggernaut that can basically do no wrong.
They churn out marvel movies every other week that never fail to make cash and their animated movies blow critics and audiences away.
Have you guys seen Zootopia? Wasn't Zootopia great? I loved that film. Yeah, I know, Hark likes a film about talking animals being a metaphor for racism, how surprising. But that film was awesome, wasn't it?
But did you know that it wasn't the first attempt of Disney to do a movie where everyone is a talking animal?
Of course you did... you've seen Disney's classic Robin hood.
But did you know they made ANOTHER more recent film about a world full of talking animals?
Yes, of course you did, you read the title of this article so you already know it's called Chicken Little.
But outside of that, why don't we hear about this film?
It was Disney's first fully CGI movie and it made over $300 million.
Well using the same super detective powers that led you know in advance that I was building towards Chicken Little, you'll realise that this review appearing in the Hate Section means is wasn't exactly a critical darling.
What's so bad about the film?
Well first off lets look at the character designs.
These guys are ugly as fuck.
Like repellently ugly.
I recoil from these characters in horror.
Yes the animation hasn't aged well at all, but Toy Story came out before this and that still looks appealing. This movie looked horrible ugly at the time.
Worst of all are the background characters.
These things (I can't bring myself to call them animals) look like they were crafted out of plasticine. They stand around with blank expressions, often repeating the same animation unenthusiastically. Their bloated heads don't even seem to fit correctly on their misplaced necks.
Let's compare and contrast...
This is Clawhauser from Zootopia. He's a big, camp, loveable police cheetah. What a fun, whimsical character.
And this is some horrific obomination from the depths of hell staring into your soul with its dead, glassy eyes.
Here's Judy Hopps from Zootopia. What an expressive, likeable character design. Go Judy! You chase your dreams! You will be a great police officer yet!
The dream this thing should follow is to wish for a mercifully quick death to end its nightmarish existance.
And finally-
Here's is Nick Wilde. Looking good Nick! Just from this image we can tell he's going to be a loveable rouge and a cool dude.
Who wouldn't want to see what kind of crazy scrapes this guy gets into?
And here we have what I assume to be cure for someone being a furry. Can't stop yiffing? Look at this. You will be unyiffed.
I want, on a very deep, primal level, to club this creature to death with a piece of wood.
If their physical hideousness wasn't off putting enough, the characters are generally have extremely unpleasant personalities. The towns people are nasty, cruel as well as mind bogglingly stupid.
The plot sets off with Chicken Little sounding an alarm bell in the town and sending all the horrible, ugly creatures into a blind panic.
They rush around, crash their cars, knock over a water tower and destroy buildings in a frenzy of insanity.
They are then all furiously angry with Chicken Little and he becomes the town pariah.
At this point the animals not seem cruel and bullying, they seem incredibly stupid, panicky and hypocritical.
Chicken Little told them they were in danger, he never said destroy the fucking town like idiots!
Chicken Little's father (called Buck Cluck...I don't know why him and Chicken Little don't share a last name) now considers Chicken Little an embarrassment and passive aggressively shames him through out the movie. Interestingly the film makes it clear we are supposed to find Buck sympathetic...but they probably didn't intend for us to hate the entire town either.
Chicken Little comes up with a plan to make everyone like him again...by winning the big baseball game.
This seems hopeless as Chicken Little is so small and puny but he trains a lot and (despite arrogantly ignoring everyone's advice not to swing) hits a home run and wins the big game, redeeming himself to the town and gaining his fathers (very conditional) love once again.
Now you might be thinking "wow, that was a pretty thin plot."
And you would be right.
However, this is where things get interesting.
That isn't the end of the movie. We are only 30 something minutes in, probably about a third of the way through.
So here we have a movie where the central tension and conflict has all been resolved a third of the way through, what do we do now?
Have aliens invade of course!
No, I'm not joking.
Aliens invade.
Now you might be thinking that there must have been some earlier signs in the movie that hinted at alien involvement that will now pay off. Sadly the amazing detective skills you showed at the start of this article have failed you, as there is no hint whatsoever.
It turns out Chicken Little's warnings about the sky falling were caused by a piece falling off an alien space ship.
Now, fairs fair, the idea of turning the Chicken Little story into one about aliens is kind of clever (changing the meaning of the sky falling). Unfortunately there is a certain logic to story telling that this film disregards. When a story builds up to something and that event resolves...you can't just say "and then more unrelated things happen" and keep it going. Well okay, you CAN do that. But then you end up making Chicken Little.
The aliens are big scary robots who are making crop circles and hiding above the town in camouflaged space ships. Chicken Little and his friends end up getting followed by a small furry alien and this provokes an alien attack.
If you suspected that the furry alien is a baby alien, and inside the robots they are all cute and furry then your detective skills have returned once more. This eye rolling, obvious 'twist' serves to surprise literally no one in the audience over the age of five.
"But Hark, maybe this film is meant for little five year olds."
Yes because five year olds love boring scenes of characters talking, filmed at a flat angle, where hideous, unlikeable creatures talk about their relationships.
No? Well shucks, this movie might be in trouble then.
The films climax actually had one scene I enjoyed.
The aliens launch their attack and proceed to disintegrate all the towns people.
This was great! These unlikeable ugly little shits were just getting obliterated.
They had ignored and belittled poor Chicken Little but now they were paying the price for their hubris.
Unfortunately this is then completely spoiled when it turns out they weren't killing the animals, just teleporting them and in the end they put all the bastards back again.
Fuck.
This film is boring, uninspired, lazy but most of all confusing. Not confusing in terms of the plot being complicated, its just confusing that anyone deliberately chose to structure a story so poorly!
I saw this movie at the cinema for free and I still felt ripped off. That was time I wouldn't get back!
Disney laid an egg with this one. Any talent at the company had obviously flown the coup. Whoever was involved should go cluck themselves.
My rating?
Chicken Shit.