Review: Chicken Litte: ReHatched! gives new, zany life to a Disney not-so-classic

A sort of sub-genre of animated films I haven't had the chance to cover here is the community-made remake. There are a decent number of these projects, some of which become hard to find because of copyright stuff, but some which manage to flourish thanks to the protections of parody law. These films find hundreds of animators from across the world contributing to re-animate movies or shows that they love, creating a dynamic mish-mash of media, tones, and even genre. The first one I watched (which was actually also the first one I had ever heard of) was the extremely well-done The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Rehydrated, which is still watchable on YouTube.

Last week, a new addition to this genre was released: Chicken Little: ReHatched!, which brought together more than 500 (!) animators to breathe new life into Disney's 2005 Chicken Little. For those who don't remember, that was Disney's first fully computer-animated feature film. It's also, for me, one of the studio's worst offerings. It's one of the movies that marked a decidedly troubling time at Disney Animation where the studio seemed to be suffering an identity crisis.

For my part, I didn't see Chicken Little until maybe a decade ago, and it just didn't hit for me. Which means I was in an odd spot for ReHatched! This movie is presumably a labor of love. I would guess most of the people involved have some sort of soft spot for the film. Maybe it was a childhood favorite of theirs. But I came to it without any nostalgia, or even any positive feelings. 

And, yeah, that means that ReHatched! isn't really my cup of tea in some part, at least, because I'm not a fan of the underlying source material. It's the sort of thing where your results may vary depending on how much you like Chicken Little, or if you even know it at all.

But, apart from that, I was duly impressed by this effort. Above all else, a project like this makes my head spin trying to imagine the logistics. Each animator, many of whom are credited as their footage plays (as well as all being included in the end credits, obviously), only takes on a small slice of the film, usually just a shot. To be that organized as to assign all these little chunks, and then to have them all flow together into something that is still pretty damned coherent, is really amazing.

Because the film is so often shifting to new styles/media/etc., it can be a little difficult to watch. For some, I think this would be headache-inducing (there's even a mid-film seizure trigger warning for a particularly flashy sequence). I find that, when you're watching one of these movies, you eventually kind of settle into the wavelength of being constantly bombarded by new imagery and energy, so it likely will sort itself out for you. But it can be challenging. That said, it does still retain the film's story, and even with all the zaniness, it remains pretty easy to follow.

(My best reference for how the overall feel/tone of this comes across is mid-2000s Flash videos. Like, the kind of stuff I would watch on eBaum's World or YouTube back in my high school days. The sort of machine-gun randomness where some of it hits, most of it doesn't stick, but it tickles some sort of funny bone.)

It's not really possible, or the point, to call out favorite shots or contributors, because there are so many, and most of the shots are so brief, that it would be hard to even know where to start. But I especially loved the video game-inspired shots (Earthbound, Red Dead Redemption 2, Minecraft, and Ocarina of Time are all represented) and some of the paper animation. There's also a lot of LEGO stuff, some live-action bits, sock puppets. It's so fun and weird to see what pops up from moment to moment. 

So even if Chicken Little: ReHatched! wasn't ultimately my cup of tea, I am so impressed by everyone who contributed, and by the larger project itself. Kudos to everyone who worked on this film, and those worked to put it all together. 

If you want to check it out for yourself, it's here on YouTube, where it's already racked up more than 50,000 well-deserved views.