Chicken Little

This Disney short is a bit preachy, but in its original incarnation, it was a lot more obvious and a lot more dated. That's because Walt felt that the obvious references to WWII would date the film. In hindsight, although the film isn't perfect, it does hold up pretty well today.

This is a retelling of the old story of Chicken Little. It's pretty obvious that it was meant to be a metaphor for spreading and believing rumors during wartime, but no mention is made of the war--just Chicken Little and all his stupid poultry friends believing ANYTHING that the wicked Fox tells them.

I give this one a 7 despite the dated theme. Why? Because the Fox is a great character and I loved the very dark and twisted ending. Well worth your time.

One negative, by the way, was the film's use of repetitive animation. Like the lower quality Hanna-Barbera films of the 60s, you see the same images again and again--in the hopes that the audience wouldn't notice this. I certainly did.

Chicken Little (1943)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This famous tale takes a different meaning as Disney used the classic story for a WWII propaganda short. A fox plans to not catch one chicken but instead catch them all so he locates the dumbest one and tells him that the sky is falling. Soon the rest of the chickens are in a panic thinking disaster really is coming. As the war went on, the studios were becoming much darker in some of the films they released and that included Disney and their children programs. This eight minute short has the famous tale that most people are going to know but what makes this version so good is the incredibly dark and sinister ending. I'm certainly not going to spoil the ending but it packs a punch even when seen today and there's no question that the studio had a message to deliver. The fox character was extremely well-written and there's no doubt that the animation was quite good. Fans of these types of animated films will certainly enjoy it.

I first watched this cartoon short when it was part of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, in an episode titled "Man Is His Own Worst Enemy." It was also my first time learning of the Chicken Little story. It was, honestly, a pretty sad story to watch, seeing Chicken Little and the rest of the bird family meeting an untimely fate in the hands of Foxy Loxy. Some of parts of the short was, though, pretty entertaining to see when Chicken Little and friends think the sky is falling, thereby, running around frantically. The characters were zany and the animation was great.

Overall, it's not a bad story. It gives children a harsh reality that not every story has a happy ending and that life could be pretty complicated.

Grade B-

A Walt Disney Cartoon.

Wily Foxy Loxey uses psychological chicanery to confuse dimwitted CHICKEN LITTLE - Step 1 in his plot to plunder the poultry yard.

This unusual little film eschews a happy ending for a not-so-subtle warning against evil manipulators and gullible citizenry. Foxy Loxey could be the personification of either Hitler or Stalin and the quotes from his psychology book ('To influence the masses, aim first at the least intelligent,' 'If you tell a lie, don't tell a little one - tell a big one,' 'Undermine the faith of the masses in their leaders,' 'By the use of flattery, insignificant people can be made to look upon themselves as born leaders') are pure Marxism. As for Cocky Locky, Henny Penny, Goosey Poosey, Ducky Lucky & Turkey Lurkey - their human counterparts are only too easy to find everyday.

Veteran Disney voice artists Florence Gill & Clarence Nash can be heard making various hen & duck noises.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work will always pay off.

The Disney shorts have seen a large number of classics and a lot of very good shorts too, there are very few that I didn't care for. Chicken Little(1943) is very different for Disney, who have rarely been more cynical or morbid, but here different equals great results. Chicken Little is terrific, maybe not quite one of the Disney masterpieces or among my personal favourites, but is bold well-made stuff and one of the better Disney shorts of the 40s. The animation is fluid and colourful, the backgrounds moving from frame to frame smoothly and the colours as vibrant and well-textured as you'd hope. The characters are well drawn too. The music is typically lush and energetic if ever so slightly repetitive. The writing can be much enjoyed, the gems being with Foxy Loxy and his psychology book dialogue. It will admittedly most likely go over children's heads but not over adults, who be impressed and amazed by how daring Chicken Little and how much of its content it manages to get away with, considering the time when it was made. The story is very true in detail to the original story but with a unusually twisted(especially for Disney) ending that will shock the viewer as much as it shocked the narrator. It also has a point that is made clearly and not heavy-handedly, and is as relevant now as it was then with stuff that parallelled WW2 and also parallels now(especially from a militaristic viewpoint). The characters carry the narrative very well and their personalities do stand out, the most memorable and entertaining by a mile being Foxy Loxy. While Frank Graham does a superb job voicing almost all the characters(Florence Gill and Clarence Nash do their distinctive hen and duck noises), particularly the narrator- the role of which is well written and doesn't try to explain too much- and Foxy Loxy. To conclude, terrific short that succeeds at doing something different from what Disney usually do. 10/10 Bethany Cox