What Parents Should Know
Parents should know that, for a kids' film, this one features prominent and repeated images of mayhem. Its opening sequence, which shows citizens running around in a panic and screaming, is somewhat frantic; it might be a bit too intense for some sensitive younger viewers. While much of the action is benign and cartoonish (crowds in a panic, animal children playing aggressive dodgeball or baseball and falling from windows), the film ends up with an alien invasion, with giant tripods and creatures inspired by War of the Worlds, and some potentially scary Predator or Aliens style music. One character is readable as "gay," as he adores disco and cowers before his mother, and another, a tough, baseball-playing female fox, is transformed into a traditional girly-girl, as a partly jokey reinforcement of traditional gender roles.

Families can discuss the relationship between the father and son, as Chicken Little wants so desperately to please his dad. How might his father show more faith in his son, rather than expecting the worst? How might Chicken Little trust his father to appreciate his own interests and identity, rather than trying so hard to be the son he imagines his father "wants" (that is, a baseball player like his father was)?

Common Sense Media Review
Cute, colorful, and mostly lively, this CHICKEN LITTLE reimagines the falling sky as invading aliens. When well-meaning Chicken Little (Zach Braff) begins the movie by ringing the tower bell in his small town, Oakey Oaks, he thinks he's been hit by a chunk of falling sky. When the residents discover that no chunk is to be found, they call him "crazy" and laugh at him. Though he's rather used to being ridiculed by his fellow citizens -- assorted dogs, bunnies, and birds -- he's sad when his rather large and widowed father, Buck Cluck (Garry Marshall), shows disapproval and worse, embarrassment at his son's behavior.

Following this episode and another -- where he's mortified at school and loses his pants (so he must fashion a pair of shorts out of his exam paper), Chicken Little resolves to make his father proud. To this end, he takes up baseball, just like his father had done, to become something of a legendary baseball star in middle school.

Chicken Little is encouraged by his best friends, also misfits at school -- a Streisand-and-disco-adoring piggy named Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn), the altogether sensible Abby Mallard (a.k.a. the Ugly Duckling, voiced by Joan Cusack), and the gurgly, diver's-helmet-headed Fish Out of Water (Dan Molina). When Chicken Little makes a big play at a big game, he thinks he's got it made with Dad, but then finds himself bonked on the head with yet another "piece" of the sky. Afraid to tell his father, he shows his friends instead, who all assure him that the sometimes-invisible panel is from an alien space ship and needs to be reported to adults.

Before the adults can be convinced, however, the kids endure more turmoil, including abduction by the aliens: they're sucked up into a gigantic ship that's full of specimens in jars and ominous machinery. Here they attract the attention of a multiple-eyed, fuzzy orange alien child, who tags along when they escape. The child's absence from the ship incites his parents, Melvin (Fred Willard) and Tina (Catherine O'Hara), to attack the town in order to get him back and punish the puny earthlings. The day will be saved, of course, though not before Oakey Oaks is razed and burned by stomping, ray-zapping alien tripods, and the townsfolk come to realize that Chicken Little has been telling the truth all along.

Families who enjoy this movie will also like another father-son relationship movie, Finding Nemo, Toy Story, or director Mark Dindal's The Emperor's New Groove, as well as Brother Bear (written by this film's scribes, Steve Bencich and Ron J. Friedman).