Chicken Little – Disney animated movie is technically very, very good, meaning that the animation is fantastic – but the story isn’t. The barest relation to the Chicken Little fairy tale is intact (CL claiming the sky is falling, plus some character names), but this is really a story about the love and support of parents. When Chicken Little raises the town alarm when he thinks a chunk of the sky has fallen – only to find it was an acorn – his dad apologizes for his conduct to the town, instead of standing up for his son. This, coupled with the fact that Dad, a local sports hero from days past, is emotionally distant from Chicken Little, and that Chicken Little feels he can never measure up to his dad’s legend in the minds of the townspeople and, most importantly, his old man, leads to some serious Parental Issues. Throw in a possible alien invasion, and you have an odd mix of whimsey and melodrama, and it doesn’t always work. The voice characterizations are apt – Zach Braff of Scrubs is Chicken Little, and Joan Cusack plays his best friend, Abby Mallard – but the dialog is a bit uneven and uninspiring. The movie wasn’t sure if it wanted to be a clever parody of old-time fairy tales and fables (like some of the best latter-day Disney) or a more straightforward, Merrie Melodies kind of ‘toon. This lack of identity hurts it; although it’s still cute enough and lighthearted enough for tots, the movie lacks the kind of knowing humor that would attract adults to it, which is the hallmark of good modern animation.

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) – A barrel of laughs, as they say, a spectactular array of thrills and chills examining life under the big top of Ringling Brothers’ Barnum & Bailey Circus, with Charlton Heston as the circus manager and Betty Hutton as the trapeze artist who isn’t sure if she likes Heston or Cornel Wilde (as a fellow aerial adventurer) better. Throw in Jimmy Stewart as a clown with a mysterious past, Gloria Grahame as a wisecracking showgirl, and a BIG train crash, and you really do have all you need for a blockbuster extravaganza that would make Barnum himself proud. Wonderfully directed by Cecil B. DeMille, the movie’s glossy with more than a touch of grit thrown in (witness the train crash, for one thing), and there’s not a sour or flat note sounded by any of the cast. Heston in particular (in one of his first roles) is a lot of fun to watch, and the stunts – some performed by the actors themselves, some by actual circus performers – are outstanding.

The Squid and the Whale – Odd movie, set in the mid-1980s, about the distingration of a marriage between two authors, one on her way up (Laura Linney) and one on the way down (Jeff Daniels). Daniels’ role is one that William Hurt could play in his sleep; arrogant, selfish, crude, cerebral, amoral. Linney practically disappears, her role is so inconsequential. The two separate at the beginning of the movie, and the balance of the film focuses on the effect on their two kids, Walt and Frank. The boys deal with the breakup in differing manners: Walt gets surlier and nastier to everyone except dear old dad, whom he idolizes, whereas Frank acts out, masturbating in the school library and subsequently defacing books and lockers. No character seems appealing enough to warrant our sympathy, except Mom – although she immediately hooks up with the local tennis pro (William Baldwin), so she’s no saint, either. So there’s a lot of tension, a lot of aggression, and a lot of meanness, and one has to wonder what the point really is. With no one to root for and characters who seemed strange for the sake of being strange, I was a bit turned off by the film. Anna Paquin shines in a brief role as a student of Daniels.