'Chicken' has a bad case of ADD

I remember the first time I heard about Pokémon. \nMust've been seven or eight years ago. On the evening news they said some cartoon show in Japan was causing seizures in epileptic children. Lots of flashing lights, everything moving at a hyperactive pace. \nAnyway, while watching "Chicken Little," that newscast came to mind. And if that doesn't say something about the film, I'll be more blunt: anything as frenetic as this movie should come with a warning label from the Surgeon General. One in every handful of kids is bound to flip out while watching it. \n"Chicken Little" is Disney's first in-house-produced computer animated feature, and you could write a book about how it matches up visually with other 3-D films like "Shrek," or the Pixar cash machines "Finding Nemo" or "The Incredibles." But that would be missing the point. No one is going to walk into an animated Disney feature and ever comment that it doesn't look up to snuff. \nThe problem here is what's actually on the screen. So much is jammed into an hour and a half that it's nearly impossible to take it all in. The movie barely lingers on one thought before bouncing off to the next. There's no way the five-year-old to which it's marketed caught it all if I'm missing most of it. Trust me, I'm sharp like that.\nThe movie is slightly based on the fable "The Sky is Falling," but beyond using its cast of characters, it's a new story. In this version, Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff... yes, that Zach Braff) notices the sky is falling. No one believes him until it turns out to be an alien invasion -- which makes for enough set pieces for the film to thrash through in the allotted time you can expect to keep a kindergartner in his/her seat. Anyhow, throw in a morality tale about father-son communication, and it's ready to rock. \nBeyond that, it's nothing special. I will acknowledge it's got one of the most impressive voice casts I've seen in an animated film. I counted Don Knotts, Fred Willard, Steve Zahn, Joan Cusack, Adam West, Katherine O'Hara, the inconceivable Wallace Shawn and Patrick Stewart, among many others.\nBut I'll bet your five-year-old has never seen "The Princess Bride," and he won't be too impressed. So skip the 90-minutes of Disney hysteria; take him to a playground instead. He could use the fresh air.