This is only the beginning. Chicken Little is a middle school student, part of the "unpopular" crowd along with an ugly ducking (Joan Cusack) an overweight pig (Steve Zahn), and a remarkably happy fish whose head is stuck in a water-filled fish bowl.
Chicken Little has a lot of trouble communicating with his father, a burly/obese former athlete single parent who means well, but is depressed since his son is apparently delusional.
So, when aliens come to visit in their cool mini and maxi spaceships, and only Little (and his unpopular friends) have seen them, no one in town believes his outlandish tales. The boy has already cried wolf.
But, he is redeemed when the aliens and their scary giant killer spider-like robots land and roam the streets. Now the town is in a panic, but not Chicken Little. He knows what the aliens want, which is the return of a lost alien child in the form of a flame-shaped, three-eyed hairball.
How others will see it. Film buffs may appreciate the in-jokes, such as a giant rolling ball that obliterates a theater playing Raiders of the Lost Ark, and a parody of the finale of King Kong. More amusing is the introduction of lyrics from the Carole King hit "It's Too Late," intended for the soccer moms since little junior has never heard the song.
But, really, the audience is the pre-teenagers who loved Ice Age, Finding Nemo, and other such animated fodder. Scenes with scary house-sized killer robots chasing and disintegrating adorable cartoon animals may be too intense for small children, or their overly concerned parents.
How I felt about it. Chicken Little is a serviceable (and occasionally mildly amusing) film that provides paychecks to a few deserving aging actors. Adults, and even kids, may be more interested in the competency of the computer-generated animation than in the tired theme of the story: unpopular kids prove their worth. The fat pig, the ugly girl, the too-little chicken, and the handicapped fish, are heroes on the largest possible scale. They've saved humanity, even though it may be in animal form.
The problem is, we are supposed to laugh at the fat pig as he gets over a fence by smashing through it (he's too fat to jump, ha ha), sings karaoke to a hip-hop love song (he's too fat to be a stud, ha ha), can't fit through a hole ('cause he's too fat, ha ha) and (worse yet), as he flatulates uncontrollably while rolling and bouncing down a hill. The unpopular kids are still to be laughed at, rather than respected, after all. So much for the movie's theme.