Home | Away

The “sky” is “falling”

While Janet was in Chicago this weekend, Jamie and I had a full slate of things to do: go to hockey games, wash and vacuum the cars, go swimming, get haircuts, and buy looseleaf binders to hold his thousands of baseball cards.  Among other things.

And go to the opening of Chicken Little, which was by far the weekend’s highest-grossing movie.  I wasn’t expecting much.  I was wrong.

Chicken Little turns out to be a remarkable piece of work.  A postmodern update on the children’s classic and a powerful allegory for our times.  Jamie and I were blown away, and here’s why.

Chicken Little opens with yet another take on the father-son dramas that have been making the rounds of Hollywood the past few years, from Finding Nemo to Big Fish.  But this one’s more in the mode of Austin Powers 3, insofar as it deals with the trauma of a son who isn’t adequately recognized or supported by his accomplished, well-respected father.  I wonder where filmmakers get the ideas for these things!  Anyway, Chicken Little claims the sky is falling . . .

Warning: Allegorical Spoiler Alert.  The Entire Movie is Given Away Below!

. . . and thereby embarrasses his father before the entire town.  Chastened, the son decides to try to win his father’s love by competing with his father on his father’s own terrain: he joins the school baseball team on which his father once starred.  Chicken Little, however, has no aptitude whatsoever for the sport—he can barely hold a bat—and contributes nothing to the team for most of the season.  Suddenly, however, in the Big Game, Chicken Little hits a game-winning inside-the-park home run, a complete fluke, further marred by the fact that he initially starts running (after miraculously hitting the ball on an 0-2 count) down the third-base line.

And with that one lucky moment, he has matched his father’s exploits and redeemed himself in his father’s eyes, after having been such a profound disappointment.

Now, here’s where things take a turn for the weird, and we leave the world of Walt Disney for the world of David Lynch.  Once the son has matched the father’s success, however haphazardly, he experiences a complete psychotic break, and begins to believe he has obtained material evidence that the sky is, in fact, falling.  The delusion builds until he is fantasizing a full-scale attack on his homeland, involving fearsome weapons of mass destruction; crucially, the only other characters who can “see” these weapons are a small cabal of misfits—the ugly duckling, the “runt of the litter” (an enormous pig), and a “fish out of water.” As the film gives itself over fully to Chicken Little’s hallucinations—marking its final narrative break with reality by depicting the sky breaking apart and being replaced with thousands of alien spacecraft—Chicken Little believes that he has been exonerated, that his reports of WMD have been “verified” by the “attack” going on all around him.  His father, witnessing the “destruction,” embraces him, asks him for his forgiveness, and vows always to support him from now on.  Chicken Little proceeds to save the world and become a hero to everyone.  As in the conclusion of Total Recall, the frame is unbroken: Chicken Little does not “wake up” or “come back” to the reality-based world, and we are thereby invited to join in his hallucinations if we so desire.

In a cannily post-postmodern postscript, the film ends with Chicken Little and his little cabal watching the Hollywood film of their exploits, in which Chicken Little is portrayed as a strong, square-jawed leader.

If there’s a more searching, more chilling portrayal of the twisted psychic landscape of our era, I haven’t seen it.  Kudos to Disney for bringing the full scope of the horror to the American public, and for reviving the long-dormant art of computer-animated political allegory.  While I enjoyed The March of the Penguins for its searing critique of Bush Administration fiscal policies, I have to say that Chicken Little is a considerably more inventive and accomplished film.

Posted by on 11/07 at 08:10 AM

  1. Our kids subverted my efforts to steer movie selection G-wardly with a simple question: Does it have bad guys?

    Thankfully those days were pre-postmodern Disney. I shudder imaging how now to explain to a sobbing child that yes, those are the good guys.

    Posted by  on  11/07  at  10:13 AM

  2. You had me going until that Penguins reference.

    Posted by Jammer  on  11/07  at  11:35 AM

  3. THE AMERINAZIS HAVE PLACED AMERICA ON THE BAD SIDE OF OUR LORD, JESUS CHRIST, AND AS A RESULT, AMERICA IS SOON TO BE TOPPLED: http://www.mixposure.com/song.php?songid=14027.

    Posted by  on  11/07  at  11:43 AM

  4. <em>In a cannily post-postmodern postscript, the film ends with Chicken Little and his little cabal watching the Hollywood film of their exploits, in which Chicken Little is portrayed as a strong, square-jawed leader.</em>

    Sounds like a Big Adventure!

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  11/07  at  12:55 PM

  5. I loved the part where Chicken Little got up on the manure spreader and declared “Mission Accomplished”!

    Posted by  on  11/07  at  01:49 PM

  6. And here I thought it was going to be a lame-ass Americanized copy of Nick Parks’s Chicken Run. 

    What is all of this chicken discourse about?  Dean Barry, what’s your take? Don’t hold back, now.

    Posted by  on  11/07  at  02:32 PM

  7. Your postmodern postmortem is way off. Bush is not at all like Chicken Little. Bush is taller.

    Posted by Bob Davis  on  11/07  at  05:13 PM

  8. if you didn’t click on dean’s song link, you should.  It’s a real treat.

    Posted by Zenji  on  11/07  at  05:42 PM

  9. Zenji, I second that emotion.  I’m especially fond of the lyrics of the opening verse--

    Some dreams are so real
    they wake you up with a scream,
    But then you look around and wish
    it was only a dream.
    You should have heard that first big rumble
    When the sky came down.

    -- which are so uncannily appropriate for Chicken Little I’m wondering if they should have been on the soundtrack.

    Posted by Michael  on  11/07  at  05:55 PM

  10. Hmmnn. Does it fade to white at the end like Total Recall?

    Posted by Jonathan Korman  on  11/07  at  09:10 PM

  11. Sounds like those jesus metal boys have been watching too much of the Fifth Element (the sun is black), or is that the little chicken?

    Posted by  on  11/07  at  10:42 PM

  12. I have a question, Michael.

    How many times are you going to lead us in these wistfully ironic directions?  I’m starting to lose track of the number of times I hoped that there was no actual punchline to your meanderingly ironic posts.

    Pixar actually does a pretty good job of creating divergent interpretations for multiple audiences without ever really forcing the discourse communities to work together to make sense of things (perhaps the only way that American Beauty succeeds in its schitzophrenic narrative).

    I keep hoping that every time Disney jettisons a Board Member or CEO they finally develop the Yang to their ubiquitous conservative Yin.

    How many times will you lead us to the edge of our daydreams, only to yank us back with a punchline?

    Don’t answer that...just keep posting.

    Posted by DocMara  on  11/08  at  01:07 PM

  13. What is “irony”?

    Posted by Michael  on  11/08  at  05:13 PM

  14. brain...exploding...inward…

    Posted by DocMara  on  11/08  at  05:43 PM

  15. perhaps the only way that American Beauty succeeds in its schitzophrenic narrative

    Yay. It’s comforting to know that not everyone fell for that chi chi, Bel-Aire-marxist folderol. It was way overrated, tho seeing Annie Bening jacked (real estate King etc. etc.) in the motel room was worth the price of admission. Plus Mssr. Spacey should have, you know, put his should to the wheel, as it were.

    Posted by Mister Toad  on  11/08  at  11:53 PM

  16. scuzi: should as in “shoulder”

    Posted by Mister Toad  on  11/08  at  11:55 PM

  17. "American Beauty” was better the 2d time, tho still overrated.  Basically an opportunity to enjoy Kevin Spacey, which is fine, unless you don’t like Spacey.

    OTOH, we live in an era where “Return of the King” was Best Picture, as was “Gladiator” a few years before it.

    Posted by  on  11/14  at  12:22 PM

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


Next entry: The Cheney Archipelago

Previous entry: Football Saturday

<< Back to main