This is Disney’s pre-Thanksgiving turkey. The old fable gets
reworked from a cautionary tale about gullibility to a weak, computer-animated
(and possibly computer-scripted) tale about father-son bonding. Despite the best vocal
efforts of Zach Braff, the title character is as bland as, say, boiled chicken.
His companions include a large pig, Runt (Steve Zahn), who warbles disco tunes
when nervous, and an ugly ducking (Joan Cusack) who has a crush on CL and whom
you’ll probably want to crush underfoot the third or fourth time she tells him
he needs “closure” with his dad (Garry Marshall). It’s the kind of film that
affects hipness by having the its beastly junior high schoolers speak in
soon-to-be-dated sitcom slang. By the fifteen-minute mark, it’s already trotted
out the cliché of having CL (unconvincingly) save the day on the ball field.
Switching gears, it then becomes the mildest sort of satire of War of the
Worlds (the Spielberg version), though the film’s target audience won’t get
that. The bright graphics and genial animals should be pleasing enough for the
under-7 set, but older kids and adults can probably find something more fun to
do.
circulated via email 11/10/05 and posted 10/2/13
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