Disney tried to outdo their old cohorts Pixar with Chicken Little, but this CG tooner was "a scrambled hodgepodge" with Zach Braff providing a creepily mature voice for the diminutive hero. Of course sharp casting and a coherent storyline matter less to an audience of ten-year-olds than they do to a roomful of critics. In the end it scooped over $135m in ticket sales, but that’s still $300m behind Shrek 2.

The Eggsperts

The confusion begins with director Mark Dindal and producer Randy Fullmer who provide introductions to four deleted scenes. Three of these are alternative openings. The first uses a naff storybook opening to sum up the fairytale of Chicken Little, which many of us aren’t familiar with (especially on this side of the pond). The second focusses on Chicken Little’s dad doing some comedy shtick in the kitchen. The third is presented in half-finished form and sees Chicken Little as a girl. No wonder the bird is insecure...

Five bite-sized featurettes provide a hurried look at the making of the film. Incubation basically credits Michael Eisner with changing Chicken Little from a girl to a boy, because he said, being small would pose a bigger problem for an adolescent boy. Strangely there’s nothing else said about the challenges of adaptation, but perhaps that’s because the writers didn’t spend enough time worrying about them. Cracking New Ground looks at development in terms of the visuals, but the "squash and stretch" method where characters’ bodies are elasticised for comic effect is hardly a new innovation. It was pioneered in the days of Looney Tunes and adapted for CG in Madagascar.

The Chickens Unplucked

Fullmer justifies the casting of Zach Braff in Birds Of A Feather saying that they needed a teenage edge to the voice. The fact that Zach Braff is over 30-years-old apparently didn’t matter as much as the realisation that, "He can talk faster than anybody we’ve ever heard." Although we get to see snippets of the actors at work in the sound booths, they don’t give interviews. At least The Barenaked Ladies are a little more forthcoming in Rock-A-Doodle-Doo – a featurette on the film’s soundtrack. We get to eavesdrop on a jamming session and the full video for One Little Slip is included with a sing-a-long option on the Music menu.

Ruling The Roost: A Day In The Life Of The Director gives a little nod to Mark Dindal, but at less than three-minutes long it’s hardly a warts ‘n’ all video diary. As far as we can tell from this featurette, he spends most of the time eating. "I’ve seen him inhale a live porcupine," reveals one of his minions. (He must be the guy who wrote all the jokes.)

A dull trivia game rounds off this very disappointing extras menu. In summation, this DVD couldn’t be scrawnier if it was raised on a battery farm.

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