OllieSuave-007 I first watched this cartoon short when it was part of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, in an episode titled "Man Is His Own Worst Enemy." It was also my first time learning of the Chicken Little story. It was, honestly, a pretty sad story to watch, seeing Chicken Little and the rest of the bird family meeting an untimely fate in the hands of Foxy Loxy. Some of parts of the short was, though, pretty entertaining to see when Chicken Little and friends think the sky is falling, thereby, running around frantically. The characters were zany and the animation was great.Overall, it's not a bad story. It gives children a harsh reality that not every story has a happy ending and that life could be pretty complicated.Grade B-

TheLittleSongbird The Disney shorts have seen a large number of classics and a lot of very good shorts too, there are very few that I didn't care for. Chicken Little(1943) is very different for Disney, who have rarely been more cynical or morbid, but here different equals great results. Chicken Little is terrific, maybe not quite one of the Disney masterpieces or among my personal favourites, but is bold well-made stuff and one of the better Disney shorts of the 40s. The animation is fluid and colourful, the backgrounds moving from frame to frame smoothly and the colours as vibrant and well-textured as you'd hope. The characters are well drawn too. The music is typically lush and energetic if ever so slightly repetitive. The writing can be much enjoyed, the gems being with Foxy Loxy and his psychology book dialogue. It will admittedly most likely go over children's heads but not over adults, who be impressed and amazed by how daring Chicken Little and how much of its content it manages to get away with, considering the time when it was made. The story is very true in detail to the original story but with a unusually twisted(especially for Disney) ending that will shock the viewer as much as it shocked the narrator. It also has a point that is made clearly and not heavy-handedly, and is as relevant now as it was then with stuff that parallelled WW2 and also parallels now(especially from a militaristic viewpoint). The characters carry the narrative very well and their personalities do stand out, the most memorable and entertaining by a mile being Foxy Loxy. While Frank Graham does a superb job voicing almost all the characters(Florence Gill and Clarence Nash do their distinctive hen and duck noises), particularly the narrator- the role of which is well written and doesn't try to explain too much- and Foxy Loxy. To conclude, terrific short that succeeds at doing something different from what Disney usually do. 10/10 Bethany Cox

José Oliver To really understand this cartoon you will need to know who was the main masters of propaganda of communism, like Antonio Gramsci, Lenin, Marx etc. All the lines read from the RED book are instruction of how insert ideas in the minds of the society, taken from the books written by these socialists. It is a manual of a Cultural War, and the western Christian world is right now loosing this war.See this: "Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society."

Robert Reynolds There will be spoilers to one degree or another in here.During World War II, Disney produced a number of cartoons for general release that were propaganda aimed at fueling the war effort. While most of these were still humorous in tone as well as serious in message, two were notably different: Education For Death, the most grimly serious short produced by a Hollywood studio I've ever seen and this one, Chicken Little, in which the humor is sharply limited and the ending is most un-Disney in nature. Disney has been taken to task (often with justification) for taking fables, fairy tales and other old source material and making it far more sweet than it originally was. This was not done here-oh, boy, was that not done! Though there is no overt attempt to make this directly about Germany, the Nazis or Hitler, the context of the times makes it clear who the target is. The use of Hitler's concept of the "Big Lie" is a dead giveaway. Interestingly, the lack of obvious ties to the current enemy make this short less dated and it can readily be viewed as targeting any totalitarian state. There's nothing cute here and only a few laughs. The ending is a punch in the solar plexus. Look at what the fox does with the wishbones.This is available on the Disney Treasures On The Front Lines. The set as a whole is remarkable and is worth having for any number of items it contains. It is telling that, as good as this short is, there are easily a half-dozen other things on the set that are even better. Most highly recommended. Get it while you can.