Metacritic reviews

The 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.

A consistently amusing, often inspired family romp.

Bogged 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.

The 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.

Lives 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.

Turning 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.

What falls in Chicken Little are hopes.

Chicken 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.

The 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.

Takes 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!